very dumb question, why does idea complain about unsafe cast in ```fun cast(value: Any?) = (value as...

# getting-started

[thanksforallthefish]

very dumb question, why does idea complain about unsafe cast in

fun cast(value: Any?) = (value as? Map<String, String?>)

?

maybe followup question, am I misusing as?? context, in this scenario I know that value might not be a map, so using as? on purpose since it returns null , but this “null-trick” makes the cast safe in my eyes, since `null`s need to be handled explicitly

[Joffrey]

The unsafe part of the cast is the generics on the map. The cast will succeed on any Map (not return null) due to type erasure, even on maps with other types as keys or values, and the compiler is warning you that this will break the type safety

[thanksforallthefish]

ah yes, that ofc. and looking at warning more carefully it does indeed complain about the String part, somehow I thought it was complaining about the Map