I have a class that takes a list of `Any` but the ...

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[Paul Woitaschek]

I have a class that takes a list of Any but the subtypes are not directly related so they can't be sealed classes.

[Alan Evans]

You can create a sealed wrapping type:

sealed class Wrapper{
   class TypeA(val value: A): Wrapper()
   class TypeB(val value: B): Wrapper()
   ...
}

[Alan Evans]

Then accept List<Wrapper> and get the exhaustive when you probably are after.

[Alan Evans]

Obviously there's probably a better name than Wrapper but I don't know your domain.

[Paul Woitaschek]

That's too performance intensive unfortunatelly

[Paul Woitaschek]

If it were inline classes... 😉

[Alan Evans]

One allocation per item is not going to break the bank!
If you have a very large list already, then you likely already have these performance issues.

[Paul Woitaschek]

No, but it doubles what's in the bank ^^

[Alan Evans]

how so? It doubles the number of objects referred to by the list. But that doesn't mean double the memory, or double the processing time.
What are we talking here, 100 items, 1000?

[Alan Evans]

I guarantee you that if you profile your application, you will see far lower hanging fruit that worrying about a few object allocations.
Profile, and optimize the inner loops, I would not optimize upfront like this, it is always a waste of time.