How to refer to yourself in the anonymous class?

Question

I have next code in kotlin:

handler.postDelayed(object : Runnable {
            override fun run() {
                Timber.i("run post msg")
                handler.postDelayed(this, AppPrefs.SEARCH_DELAY)
            }
        },AppPrefs.SOCKET_INTERVAL)

how you see it's simple standard way to create delayed task (with Runnable class). Value this references to anonimus Object implements Runnable and compile and works fine

But when i make lamdba for this:

handler.postDelayed({
            Timber.i("run post msg")
            handler.postDelayed(this, AppPrefs.SOCKET_INTERVAL)
        },AppPrefs.SOCKET_INTERVAL)

value this referenced to outher class.

How referenced from inner anonimus class to yourself?

Answer 1

You cannot do this. A similar question was asked on Kotlin's forum and yole (one of the creators of the language) said this:

this in a lambda refers to the instance of the containing class, if any. A lambda is conceptually a function, not a class, so there is no such thing as a lambda instance to which this could refer.

The fact that a lambda can be converted into an instance of a SAM interface does not change this. Having this in a lambda mean different things depending on whether the lambda gets SAM-converted would be extremely confusing.