could someone help me understand generics in this situation: This works fine:

val classes: List<KClass<*>> = listOf(
    Person::class,
    Teacher::class,
)

And this produces an error

val classes: List<KClass<Any>> = listOf(
    Person::class,
    Teacher::class,
)

(the difference being

*

vs

Any

) I want to store any kclass, and don’t know the types. I thought

*

meant they all have the same type but i don’t know what it is

I would read this to understand how

*

projection works. https://typealias.com/guides/star-projections-and-how-they-work/ The entire series starting at https://typealias.com/guides/illustrated-guide-covariance-contravariance/ is very well done.

i actually found those articles after posting this and I am reading it now 🙂

KClass<Any>

is the type of the

Any

class, while

KClass<*>

represents some class, but we don't know which one. If you want to store any KClass instance, you should use the star projection

thank you. those articles actually did explain this better than i have understood it before