basically serialize/deserialize just the class kin...

# getting-started

[y]

basically serialize/deserialize just the class kind, I don’t care about the state of the class itself

[Michael de Kaste]

maybe I'm not understanding the question, but why not provide the actual class as the argument for the function that changes the state?

when(yourClassInstance){
    is State1 -> doState1Thing()
    is State2 -> doState2Thing()
}

or otherwise, you can just get the class with

yourClassInstance::class

[y]

because I want to make the class type the alphabet of the state machine, and I want to make different state machines over this alphabet

[y]

and I want an easy way to encode the states for each such FSM

[y]

is someClass::class going to be the same for each run, and independent of the state of the that class’s instance?

[Stephan Schroeder]

yes, the class of an instance is independent of the state of that instance.

[Michael de Kaste]

Yes, it's metadata about the class itself and not the actual values within those classes.

[y]

thank you

[Michael de Kaste]

You can also retrieve all your possible states if you ask the following from your sealed parent if you need to

SealedParent::class.sealedSubclasses

[y]

oh, very nice.

[y]

so my alphabet’s type is going to be a KClass.

[Michael de Kaste]

well if you need to store it somewhere, it can even be a string

yourClassInstance::class.simpleName

it all depends on your usecase

[y]

might be easier to just make 2 simple when clauses to translate to/from some compact representation like a byte.

[y]

the translation back is a problem, kinda.

[y]

but I don’t think I need it.

[y]

basically this looks like a giant XY problem the more I think about it

[Michael de Kaste]

well if you need to (de)serialize the actual values then yeah

[Michael de Kaste]

otherwise, if your statemachine is just that: Different states, I'd argue you should keep them as enums or sealed objects instead and let them be a value of a class