Kotlin Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide, First Edition

Renaming an Extension

Occasionally, you may want to use an extension or an imported class whose name is less than ideal in some way. Perhaps it is a difficult-to-remember acronym, or maybe you already have a class with the same name in your file. If you want the function of an imported function or class but not its name, you can use the as operator to assign a different name to be used within the file.

For example, in Tavern.kt you could change the name of the imported random function to randomizer:

Listing 18.16  The as operator (Tavern.kt)

import com.bignerdranch.nyethack.extensions.random as randomizer
...
private fun selectHometown() = File("data/towns.txt")
       .readText()
       .split("\n")
       .random()
       .randomizer()
...

And with ...