Just out of curiosity: Was it ever considered to r...

# stdlib

[Astronaut4449]

Just out of curiosity: Was it ever considered to remove the infix function to from the stdlib and make it some encapsulated function of a map builder scope so that we can write:

val squared = mapOf { // this refers to some MapBuilderScope<K,V> with builder inference
    1 to 1 // `to` is only visible in the `MapBuilderScope`
    2 to 4
    3 to 9
}

[mcpiroman]

Well, it should not be necessary (and possible) to remove the current `to`function, the scope's should take precedence.

[Astronaut4449]

Why is it not possible in your opinion?

[mcpiroman]

It is too commonly used, not only to build maps.

[rnett]

See https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-43871 for proper collection literals

[Astronaut4449]

I belong to the fraction of people who don't like collection literals. On the other hand I don't like that to pollutes the global namespace and extends the Any? type. Having a limited scope of to inside a builder context would eliminate that issue imho.

[Joffrey]

This would require changes to many utility functions, such as the associate family. Also it would prevent things like map { a to b }.toMap() (but more complicated) in cases where associate cannot be directly used for some reason, and force people to use the Pair() constructor manually. I'm not sure it's objectively better tbh

[Astronaut4449]

Good point @Joffrey