run() with receiver (scope function)

Overview

There are two different run() functions defined in Standard.kt in the Kotlin standard library, among a handful of scope functions that are frequently used in Kotlin programming. This article describes the one that’s an extension function.

Example

val size = "Hello".run {
    println(this)
    this.length
}

In this example, the string “Hello” is printed, and then its length is assigned to the size variable.

Characteristics

When the run() extension function executes:

• the receiver object that .run() is called upon is available as this
• the result of run() will be the result of the code block passed to it

Initialize and Execute

A good use case for the run() extension function is initializing an object that is immediately executed, or passed to something else for execution. Here’s an example using a hypothetical HTTP client:

val response = Request("GET", "https://www.example.com/").run { 
    addQueryParam("name1", "value1")
    addQueryParam("name2", "value2")
    execute()
}

In this example, the Request object is built up with additional query params before calling execute() on it. The code here has no further use for the Request object after it’s executed, so it’s never actually assigned to anything - response will contain the result of Request.execute().

Alternatives

The guide, Understanding Kotlin’s let(), also(), run(), and apply() has some information about how to choose which scope function to use.