Mastering Kotlin

The inline modifier

One way in which we can control the performance of our higher-order functions is through the usage of the inline modifier keyword. The inline modifier allows us to improve the performance of our higher-order functions by indicating to the compiler that the implementation of a function can be inlined at the call site, thereby avoiding the performance overhead associated with variable capture and class instantiation of a higher-order function.

To explore how this works, let's start by defining this function, safelyRun:

fun safelyRun(action: () -> Unit) {    try {        action()    } catch (error: Throwable) {        println("Caught error: ${error.message}")    }}

This is a top-level, higher-order function that will run whatever lambda is passed ...