why do I not need an L suffix in Kotlin to create ...

# codingconventions

[Florian]

why do I not need an L suffix in Kotlin to create a Long literal

[Pavlo Liapota]

Because otherwise it is Int literal 🙂

[Florian]

But it is not needed

[Florian]

unlike in Java

[Pavlo Liapota]

Kotlin does not have implicit cast of primitive types.

[Shawn]

fun longConsumer(long: Long) {
    println(long)
}

longConsumer(42)

works in a scratch file ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Florian]

When you assign a large number to a variable it infers it as Long without the L

[Florian]

I am wondering why

[bdawg.io]

It's all about the compiler being able to infer what you want.

[Florian]

right, but in Java a number literal without an L is an int

[Florian]

even if its out of range of int

[bdawg.io]

Well Kotlin isn't Java :) if you leave a numeric literal ambiguous and the compiler determines that int and long are both acceptable, I really like that it will use a long. Otherwise, what's the point in me having such a large literal in my code if it's just going to get overflowed anyways

[Florian]

yea it makes sense

[Florian]

But why did they add that in Java in the first place

[bdawg.io]

Java was generally verbose and explicit, so inferring what you probably meant to do wasn't really a thing.

[Florian]

Ok thank you