is there a Kotlin similar to the C# implicit operator? I'd like to be able to have an e-mail class t...

# getting-started

[Gabriel Luchtenberg]

is there a Kotlin similar to the C# implicit operator?
I'd like to be able to have an e-mail class that has its validation on the constructor, but I'd like to be able to do something similar to

val email : Email = "<mailto:[e-mail]|[e-mail]>"

[Bryan Buschmann]

Does that imply that there is a class with a constructor`Email(String)` ?

[Gabriel Luchtenberg]

yep

[Bryan Buschmann]

Wouldn't val primaryIdentity = Email("<mailto:[e-mail]|[e-mail]>") be more concise and more explicit at the same time?

[Bryan Buschmann]

Using the constructor informs other developers about the How as well as the What.

[Andrew O'Hara]

Alternatively; "<mailto:[e-mail]|[e-mail]>".toEmail() where

fun String.toEmail(): Email = TODO("validate and init email")

[Bryan Buschmann]

I was thinking about that as well, but I tilted back and forth on it and decided to fall on the constructor side of things.

[Josh Eldridge]

If I saw val email : Email = "<mailto:[e-mail]|[e-mail]>" I'd think someone type aliased a string as Email for some reason, not super readable up front

[Stephan Schröder]

let's talk more about the validation on the constructor aspect. First your use case sounds like the typical inline class example where you don't want to pay for the overhead of a wrapper type.
So this would be the approach to do that:

@JvmInline
value class Email(val value: String) {
    init {
        require(value.contains('@')) {"email value $value doesn't contain '@'"}
    }
}

At runtime the compiler will have gotten rid of the Email class in most cases, so you have the performance of only handling a String but the type safety of a wrapper type approach.
But as mentioned before the wrapping of your type around a string isn't invisible, so it's either Email("<mailto:[e-mail]|[e-mail]>") or you write an extension function (this time without the validation, since that's taken care of in the init-block).

fun String.toEmail(): Email = Email(this)

For more info on inline classes see https://kotlinlang.org/docs/inline-classes.html

[phldavies]

Given the general usage of inline value classes to represent refined types, I can see the value in an implicit constructor - possibly useful as value class Email implicit constructor(val value: String) 🤔

[Stephan Schröder]

Kotlin very much prefers being explicit over being implicit. If you want to overwrite a function, you have to add the overwrite keyword, if you want tail recursion to be applied to a function that would allow it, you still have to add tailrec, if you want to convert number types, e.g. convert an Int to Long, you still have to invoke toLong(). Notice that this is even the case for the safe direction Int -> Long.
I googled a bit a found an old discussion from 2015, coming to the same conclusion https://discuss.kotlinlang.org/t/union-types/77/10
Of course this is not a primary source (from JetBrains itself), but just another dev coming to the same conclusion.