What is suspending function in Kotlin?

A suspending function in Kotlin is a function that can be paused and resumed without blocking a thread. It is marked with the suspend keyword and can be called only from within a coroutine or another suspending function[1][2][3].

When a function is marked as suspend, it means that the function can suspend its execution at certain points, typically when waiting for asynchronous operations to complete, such as network requests or disk I/O[1]. The function can then be resumed later without blocking the thread, allowing other coroutines to run in the meantime[1][4].

Suspending functions are at the core of Kotlin coroutines. They allow for a more concise and readable way of writing asynchronous code compared to traditional callback-based approaches[1][3].

To call a suspending function, you need to launch a coroutine using one of the coroutine builders, such as launch, async, or runBlocking[1][4]. The suspending function can then be called within the coroutine.

Here's an example of a suspending fun...