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|    |    |/ _|_____/  |_|  | |__| ____   07/2016  |
|    |      / /  _ \   __\  | |  |/    \           |
|    |    | \(  (_} )  | |  |_|  |   |  \          |
|    |____|__ \____/|__| |____/__|___|  /          |
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|            __  .__                               |
|          _/  |_|__| _____   ____   ______        |
|          \   __\  |/     \_/ __ \ /  ___/        |
|           |  | |  |  Y Y  \  ___/ \___ \         |
|           |__| |__|__|_|  /\___  >____  )        |
|                         \/     \/     \/         |
|                                                  |
|           -  -  BREAKING NEWS!  -  -             |
|   A software engineering masterpiece released!   |
|  ___________________________                     |
|  | fun thisReallyWorks() { | "Kotlin  literally  |
|  |   50 times {            | becomes    another  |
|  |     println("""         | language",    said  |
|  |                         | some random Kotlin  |
|  |    This would print     | developer.   After  |
|  |                         | many long years of  |
|  |   oooooooo   .oooo.     | careful    coding,  |
|  |  dP"````"P  d8P'`Y8b    | kotlin-times  says  |
|  | d88888b.   888    888   | goodbye to the lab  |
|  |     `Y88b  888    888   | and  finally  sees  |
|  |       ]88  888    888   | the  light of day.  |
|  | o.   .88P  `88b  d88'   | "Pure awesomeness", |
|  | '8bd88P"    `Y8bd8P'    | said the other guy. |
|  |                         |      -  -  -        /
|  |                times!   |   More info and    /
|  |     """)                |    poor quality   /
|  |   }                     |  screen captures /
|  | }                       |    on page 42.  /
|  |_________________________|              /\/
\                                          /
 \  /\   In other news: Java still verbose/
  \/  \/\    /\  /\/\  /\/\  /\/\    /\  /
         \  /  \/    \/    \/    \  /  \/
          \/                      \/

You might have thought that Kotlin cannot get any better - but now you have found this library. Thanks to kotlin-times your Kotlin applications will never be the same. Enter the future of programming.

Kotlin Times

This library, carefully crafted by our Kotlin experts, extends Byte, Short, Int and Long types with infix methods sharing times identifier. It effectively allows its users to set up simple and readable loops with a pleasant Kotlin*-ish* syntax:

50 times {
  println("Will be printed 50 times!")
}

You can access current iteration index as well! It starts at 0 and ends at n-1.

10 times { index ->
  println("This is the $index run.")
}

As usual in case of single-parameter lambdas, current iteration index can be also accessed with it.

10 times {
  println("This is the $it run.")
}

If you prefer even less verbose operators, times happens to be the valid name of the * operator, which - combined with a number - is a pretty readable and obvious way of saying that you want to repeat a loop block for a certain amount of times. Lucky us.

10 * {
  println("Equivalent to '10 times {...}'")
}

Thanks to the fact that these are all inline functions, there is little-to-none runtime overhead for their usage - they compile to pretty much the same byte code as regular Kotlin loops (or Java ones, for that matter). Needless to say, these should be as fast as any other simple loop created with the official API. In fact, methods similar to these obviously should be a part of the official API, available out of the box in the standard library. Duh.

Is it stable?

Definitely. We are proud to announce that all of the extension methods are fully tested on every possible number in each value range. 100% test coverage comes at a price: the full test suite can run for hours due to integers and longs being big their admirable complexity.

Why would you even do that?

Joking aside, I kind of missed the good old classic Java for(int i=0; i<n; i++) loop. Not sure if such syntax is even supported by Kotlin, which I found pretty surprising. (You know, 'var' on loop parameter is not allowed.) Yeah, I'm probably getting old.

Still, I personally don't find the range syntax more readable than times or even *, and ranges actually can be slightly error-prone. For example, the innocent looking for(i in 0..n-1) might loop Int.MAX_VALUE times (instead of being silently ignored) if n happens to be Int.MIN_VALUE. Needless to say, for(i in 1..n) can be less useful in the 0-indexed Java world, as you may have to subtract 1 manually from each value. And using a while loop is usually too verbose if you just want to repeat an action n times.

This "library" might seem like a joke, but - to be honest - I personally find it a decent alternative to numeric ranges, which is both easy to read and pretty useful for all kinds of debugging and testing stuff when all you want is to set up a simple loop as quickly as possible. And I didn't want to ship it with a complete complex utility library. Sue me.

Equivalents

var i = 0
while(i < n) {
  // Do something.
  i++
}

Too verbose. Next.

var i = -1
while(++i < n) {
  // Do something.
}

Not even trying.

for(i in 0..n-1) {
  // Do something.
}

"Crashes" on Int.MIN_VALUE - other than that, this seems to be a sensible way to set it up.

for(i in 1..n) {
  val index = i - 1
  // Do something.
}

Awkward if you need iteration indexes to start with 0.

for(i in 0 until n) {
  // Do something.
}

Verbose. Ish.

(0..n-1).forEach { i ->
  // Do something.
}

(0 until n).forEach { i ->
  // Do something.
}

This might be my personal favorite, but it still seems more verbose than necessary.

inline operator fun IntRange.invoke(action: (Int) -> Unit) {
  for (i in this) action(i)
}

// Given the operator extension, you can do this:
(0..n-1) { i ->
  // Do something. 
}

I pity maintainers of your code if you do this, but I have got to admit it looks unsettlingly tempting.

repeat(n) { i ->
  // Do something.
}

...Um, wait, is this library actually necessary?

How do I include this beauty in my project?

Easily - its already on Maven Central.

Maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.github.czyzby</groupId>
  <artifactId>kotlin-times</artifactId>
  <version>1.0</version>
</dependency>

Gradle

compile 'com.github.czyzby:kotlin-times:1.0'

compile group: 'com.github.czyzby', name: 'kotlin-times', version: '1.0'

Working with the sources

Since this library consists of a single Kotlin file, you can just copy the extension methods to your application and modify them however you like. You can also clone this repository and use Gradle to set up this project, if you really want to.

The code is dedicated to public domain, so feel free to do anything. Just so you know.

Variations

If you're feeling brave, try refactoring times to something like x for this awkwardly short syntax without overloaded operators: 8 x { println("Will work just fine.") }. Life is a sandbox.

The future

Our experts are currently working on extension methods for other numeric types. Hopefully, if the project is not aborted by then, the official 2.0 version will be released in 2042.

Contribution

If you do not think that kotlin-times is perfect in every way for some reason, you can create an issue or open a pull request. Thanks in advance.