10-Dec

Bring your generic function type parameters back to life with the reified keyword

Reification. Like many other concepts, it can be applied in a number of different ways and it might carry slightly different meanings depending on the context. According to this definition, reification is simply the act of representing something abstract in a physical way. In Java, on the other hand, the term is used in the context of which types that are available to us at runtime. Additionally, in Kotlin we actually have a modifier keyword built into the language, namely reified. In this article we'll take a closer look at how reification and type erasure are connected, and more specifically how we can combine inline functions and reified type parameters in Kotlin to achieve things in generic functions that we normally would not be able to.

4 min read

By Sondre Larsen Ovrid

December 10, 2020

A brief introduction to type erasure

In order to get a good picture of how and when reification can help us, a little background is needed. Just like Java, Kotlin applies type erasure to generic function type parameters when our code is compiled. In other words, information about the actual type of our type parameters are by default not available to us at runtime. We can illustrate this by looking at some examples. Let's say we have the following generic functions which simply takes an argument of a generic type G and returns it:

fun <G> simpleGenericFunctionWithoutBound(thing: G) = thing fun <G : ExtendableClass> simpleGenericFunctionWithBound(thing: G) = thing

To see what actually happens "under the hood" we can look at the decompiled bytecode (*). The functions we declared above will be decompiled to the following Java code (note that some annotations and other generated artifacts have been removed in this and the following examples, in order to make the them more terse):

public static final Object simpleGenericFunctionWithoutBounds(Object thing) { return thing; } public static final ExtendableClass simpleGenericFunctionWithBound(ExtendableClass thing) { return thing; }

Here we're observing how type erasure and bounded/unbounded type substitution have been applied by the compiler. Our simpleGenericFunctionWithoutBound-function has had its type parameter replaced by the concrete type Object. Similarly in simpleGenericFunctionWithBound it has been replaced by ExtendableClass, which we defined as the upper limit for our type parameter.

As a result of this substitution, there is no way for the JVM runtime to derive any information about the concrete type of the supplied argument when these functions are being invoked. We can invoke the generic functions with arguments of any type adhering to the bounds, but type information will ultimately be lost on the way. Put in another way, generic function type parameters are by-default defined as non-reifiable.

* The IntelliJ IDE comes with a handy tool for inspecting kotlin bytecode and its decompiled Java counterpart. This can be found under "Tools > Kotlin > Show Kotlin Bytecode".

The reified modifier keyword

So how can we reify our type parameters in the generic functions we defined above? Unfortunately there's no escaping the type erasure that the compiler applies. Instead, Kotlin can help us yet again with some of its language specific magic. We can modify one of the generic functions we defined earlier, and invoke it like so:

inline fun <reified G : Any> simpleGenericFunctionWithoutBounds(thing: G): G { print(G::class) return thing } fun main() { simpleGenericFunctionWithoutBounds(ExtendableClass()) }

The inline modifier keyword tells the Kotlin compiler that we want to perform inline expansion of the function at the call-site. We will not go into the details of inlining (*), but it has some interesting implications which Kotlin can take advantage of to get around type erasure. Essentially what happens is that the content of the declared function body is duplicated and included wherever we're invoking the function.

Since we have information about the actual type of the type parameter at the call-site, maybe there is some way to carry over this information to runtime? This is what the reified modifier keyword instructs the compiler to do. Let's take another look at the decompiled byte code of our updated function:

 // Function declaration public static final Object simpleGenericFunctionWithoutBounds(Object thing) { ... Intrinsics.reifiedOperationMarker(4, "G"); KClass var2 = Reflection.getOrCreateKotlinClass(Object.class); boolean var3 = false; System.out.print(var2); return thing; } // Invocation public static final void main() { new ExtendableClass(); ... KClass var2 = Reflection.getOrCreateKotlinClass(ExtendableClass.class); ... System.out.print(var2); }

Here we see how Kotlin has gotten around type erasure of type parameters: since inline expansion is performed, additional information can be included at the call-site - i.e. Kotlin can provide us with runtime information about the actual type of generic function type arguments! Specifically, in this example we now have access to the concrete type information about the parameter we invoked simpleGenericFunctionWithoutBounds with: ExtendableClass, on which we're accessing ::class.

Hopefully this article has helped in demystifying the concept of reification a little, and illustrated how we may take advantage of this concept to do things we otherwise would not be able to through the use of the reified keyword. Whether it is using the Reflection API as we did in the example above, using it for type checks and type casts, and so forth.

* You can read more about the inline modifier keyword in the Kotlin docs.