There should be a ```inline fun <T> T?.print...

# language-proposals

[Eric Ou]

There should be a

inline fun <T> T?.println(): T? {
    println(this)
    return this
}

so I dont have to move my caret around when trying to debug

[dmitriy.novozhilov]

How you will print empty line, if such function would exist?

[Eric Ou]

println()

[Eric Ou]

Im not saying to get rid of the original println, just add a extension method to easily print an object inline

[dmitriy.novozhilov]

class A {
    fun test() {
        println()
    }
}

Does it print empty line or A?

[Eric Ou]

I see... so in this case you can't print an empty line without using the full qualified name...

[dmitriy.novozhilov]

Yep

[Eric Ou]

You could just call it something else

[Eric Ou]

Like printObject or something

[Eric Ou]

or printAndReturn

[dmitriy.novozhilov]

Do you have any usecases except debugging?

[Youssef Shoaib [MOD]]

There's already an idiomatic pattern to do this btw:

objectOrLongExpression.also(::println).continueMethodChain()

In general, also is used to perform some side effect and then continue a method chain.

[Eric Ou]

hmm I never thought about it that way

[Eric Ou]

But yeah, not really a usecase outside of debugging I would say

[Eric Ou]

I mean the usage of println is kinda limited in the first place right?

[Starr]

there's also the IntelliJ suffix template stuff