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The Joy of Kotlin
book

The Joy of Kotlin

by Pierre Yves Saumont
April 2019
Intermediate to advanced
480 pages
13h 22m
English
Manning Publications
Audiobook available
Content preview from The Joy of Kotlin

6 Dealing with optional data

In this chapter

  • The null reference or “the billion dollar mistake”
  • Alternatives to null references
  • Developing an Option data type for optional data
  • Applying functions to optional values
  • Composing optional values

Representing optional data has always been a problem in computer programs. The concept of optional data is simple. In everyday life, it’s easy to represent the absence of something when this something is stored in a container—whatever it is, it can be represented by an empty container. For example, an absence of apples can be represented by an empty apple basket. The absence of gasoline in a car can be visualized as an empty gas tank. But representing the absence of data in computer programs is a little ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781617295362Publisher SupportPublisher Website