Defining Methods in Classes

Introduction to methods in classes

When you design a class in Kotlin, you often want the objects created from that class to perform actions or calculations. This is where methods come in. Methods are functions that belong to a class and define what its objects can do.

What is a Method?

A method is a function defined inside a class. It describes a behavior or action that objects of that class can perform. Methods can take parameters and return values, just like regular functions, but they operate in the context of an object.

Declaring Methods

To declare a method in a Kotlin class, you write a function inside the class body. The method can access the properties of the class and can be called on any instance (object) of that class.

You can call a method on an object by using the dot syntax. In the example above, you first create a Calculator object with val calculator = Calculator(). Then, you call the add method on this object by writing calculator.add(3, 5). This calls the method and passes 3 and 5 as arguments, so the method returns their sum, which is printed to the console.