Kotlin asterisk operator before variable name or Spread Operator in Kotlin

Question

I want to know what exactly an asterisk does before a variable name in Kotlin. I saw this (*args) in a Spring boot Kotlin example:

@SpringBootApplication
open class Application {

    @Bean
    open fun init(repository: CustomerRepository) = CommandLineRunner {
        repository.save(Customer("Jack", "Bauer"))
        repository.save(Customer("Chloe", "O'Brian"))
        repository.save(Customer("Kim", "Bauer"))
        repository.save(Customer("David", "Palmer"))
        repository.save(Customer("Michelle", "Dessler"))
    }
}

fun main(args: Array<String>) {
    SpringApplication.run(Application::class.java, *args)
}

Answer 1

The * operator is known as the Spread Operator in Kotlin.

From the Kotlin Reference...

When we call a vararg-function, we can pass arguments one-by-one, e.g. asList(1, 2, 3), or, if we already have an array and want to pass its contents to the function, we use the spread operator (prefix the array with *):

It can be applied to an Array before passing it into a function that accepts varargs.

For Example...

If you have a function that accepts a varied number of arguments...

fun sumOfNumbers(vararg numbers: Int): Int {
    return numbers.sum()
}

You can pass an array into it like so...

val numbers = intArrayOf(2, 3, 4)
val sum = sumOfNumbers(*numbers)
println(sum) // Prints '9'

---

Notes:

• The * operator is also the multiplication operator (of course).
• The operator can only be used when passing arguments to a function. The result of the operation cannot be stored since it yields no value (it is purely syntactic sugar).
• The operator may confuse some C/C++ programmers at first because it looks like a pointer is being de-referenced. It isn't; Kotlin has no notion of pointers.
• The operator can be used in-between other arguments when calling a vararg function. This is demonstrated in the example here.
• The operator is similar to the apply function in various functional programming languages.