Yeah I was really surprised by it as recently I was playing with some maths and had this

data class Complex(val re: Double, val im: Double)

nice class and a few operators on it and I was so happy that I can do all this

z = z * z + c

thingies, wow Kotlin is so great. Then I was sooooo happy when I figured out I can add

val Double.i get() = Complex(0.0, this)

and simply have

val z = 3.5.i

And then, just after that, I saw the "Puzzlers" talk. And tried

-3.5.i

. Oh boy...

But what is the problem with that in your case? Just define

unaryMinus

operator on your complex number and it’ll work just as it is supposed to work.

of course.

It would had been really strange if the behavior of this code depended on the spae between

-

and

3.5

(in maths it does not usually matter if you have a space or not)

agree. I would only limit it to literals, but I get your point.