what is significant that prevents kotlin from allowing

..

operator to create descending ranges like

9..5

? Shouldn't it be somewhat trivial to put into the code to create one or the other based on the higher value? is it simply ambiguity?

This is intentional decision. To avoid subtle bugs with ranges.

makes sense. if they were only used to make ranges with number literals, then it would probably be added functionality, but with variables, it becomes obscure

yes, because of variables and functions, such as indexOf, which may return

-1

thanks for the explanation

and now it safe, you just get 0 length range