I'm dealing with function overloading when the parameters are lambdas and stumbled upon the followin...

# getting-started

[dephinera]

I'm dealing with function overloading when the parameters are lambdas and stumbled upon the following case:

fun foo(block: String.(String) -> Unit) {

}

fun foo(block: () -> Unit) {

}

fun main() {
    foo { it: String ->
        // calls foo(block: String.(String) -> Unit)
    }
    
    foo { // ERROR
        // how to call foo(block: () -> Unit)
    }
}

Basically is there a way to specify in the second case that I want to call foo(block: () -> Unit). When I specified the type of the lambda argument, it seemed that the compiler was able to figure it out, however it: Unit doesn't work for the second case.

[Shawn]

I don’t think I’ve ever actually read documentation that discusses this particular syntactic construction, but try calling the second function like this:

foo { ->
  // do stuff here
}

[Shawn]

this explicitly declares that this lambda takes no parameters, disambiguating the function call

[dephinera]

okay, that worked. Thanks!

[Youssef Shoaib [MOD]]

I've literally never seen that syntax before wow. This really should be documented

[Youssef Shoaib [MOD]]

Apparently this is part of the official grammar:

lambdaLiteral (used by annotatedLambda, functionLiteral)

  : '{' statements '}'

  | '{' lambdaParameters? '->' statements '}'

  ;

that question mark means 0 or 1 of the item, and lambdaParameters defines the whole list of parameters, and so according to the grammar you can have no parameters but still use the -> before your statements. So I guess it is documented and expected behaviour, it's just that no one actually mentions it anywhere outside of the grammar!

[dephinera]

I admit it, it didn't even occur to me to look for the grammar. Thanks!

[Adam Powell]

It's kind of neat that you can do this, but wouldn't it be clearer for a reader of the code if these functions had different names instead? If the caller is trying to make a conscious choice of which one is being invoked, are their purposes not different?