I was thinking about how obtuse it is to have weak...

# language-proposals

[krtko]

I was thinking about how obtuse it is to have weak references in Java, do you think Kotlin could simplify that by adding weak/strong references as apart of the declaration of a variable like

weak var something: Something? = someRef //of type WeakReference<Something> 
if (something == null) { /*True if something's reference is null*/ } 
var inferredWeakSomething = something //of type WeakReference<Something>
strong var strongSomething = something //of type Something?

[elizarov]

Why make it available only for weak refs? Why not support for all kinds of “boxes”. But Kotlin already has this feature — delegated variables. With a few libraries definitions you can already make it work like this:

var something: Something by weak(someRef)

[Dico]

@elizarov I noticed that the stdlib appears to be missing a property delegate for ThreadLocal. A simple ThreadLocal subclass implementing ReadWriteProperty<Any?, T> that is returned from some overloaded functions named threadLocal would be cool to have. Would a pull request into the stdlib repository be the right approach?

[elizarov]

The right approach would be to implement it in your library. You can also vote for the corresponding issue: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-10957

[Dico]

Fair enough. Thanks