if-Expression

In Kotlin, if is not just a statement (as in Java), but rather an expression, so it returns a value.

val oddOrEven = if (i % 2 == 0) "even" else "odd"

So if returns the value of the branch that matches the condition.

That’s why the well-known ?: operator in Java is superfluous, because you can map its functionality with if … else.

Incidentally, this also applies to many other expressions, such as try/catch blocks:

val contents = try {
    file.readText ()
  } catch (ex: Exception) {
    "File could not be loaded: $ex"
  }