How to repeat a string n times in Kotlin, when n is Long

Question

I know using repeat function we can repeat a string n times but what if the n is bigger than a size of an Int

I'm afraid it's not possible, unless long is actually small enough to fit in Int. String just can't contain so many characters: stackoverflow.com/a/1179996/2956272 — user2956272
– user2956272, Commented Jul 29, 2019 at 20:16

Francesc · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-29 20:20:03Z

1

You can do this, though you are likely to run out of memory with such long strings

fun String.repeat(times: Long): String {
    val inner = (times / Integer.MAX_VALUE).toInt()
    val remainder = (times % Integer.MAX_VALUE).toInt()
    return buildString {
        repeat(inner) {
            append([email protected](Integer.MAX_VALUE))
        }
        append([email protected](remainder))
    }
}

answered Jul 29, 2019 at 20:20

Francesc

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3 Comments

Alexey Romanov Over a year ago

This won't actually work (unless times fits into Int or the string is empty), dyukha's comment is correct.

Amin Memariani Over a year ago

@AlexeyRomanov, Is there any other data type that can hold that amount of value other than String?

Alexey Romanov Over a year ago

@AminMemariani Not in the standard library, unless I miss something. You can't even define your own implementing CharSequence, that has int length too.

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