Odersky M. Programming in Scala

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Section 6.10 Chapter 6 · Functional Objects 141

As always, the operator syntax on the last input line is equivalent to a method

call. You could also write:

scala> x.+(y)

res9: Rational = 7/6

but this is not as readable.

Another thing to note is that given Scala’s rules for operator precedence,

which were described in Section 5.8, the

method will bind more tightly

than the + method for Rationals. In other words, expressions involving

+ and

operations on Rationals will behave as expected. For example,

x + x

y will execute as x + (x

y), not (x + x)

scala> x + x

res10: Rational = 5/6

scala> (x + x)

res11: Rational = 2/3

scala> x + (x

res12: Rational = 5/6

6.10 Identiﬁers in Scala

You have now seen the two most important ways to form an identiﬁer in

Scala: alphanumeric and operator. Scala has very ﬂexible rules for forming

identiﬁers. Besides the two forms you have seen there are also two others.

All four forms of identiﬁer formation are described in this section.

An alphanumeric identiﬁer starts with a letter or underscore, which can

be followed by further letters, digits, or underscores. The ‘$’ character also

counts as a letter, however it is reserved for identiﬁers generated by the Scala

compiler. Identiﬁers in user programs should not contain ‘$’ characters, even

though it will compile; if they do this might lead to name clashes with iden-

tiﬁers generated by the Scala compiler.

Scala follows Java’s convention of using camel-case

identiﬁers, such as

toString and HashSet. Although underscores are legal in identiﬁers, they

are not used that often in Scala programs, in part to be consistent with Java,

This style of naming identiﬁers is called camel case because the identiﬁersHaveHumps

consisting of the embedded capital letters.

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Section 6.10 Chapter 6 · Functional Objects 142

but also because underscores have many other non-identiﬁer uses in Scala

code. As a result, it is best to avoid identiﬁers like to_string, __init__, or

name_. Camel-case names of ﬁelds, method parameters, local variables, and

functions should start with lower case letter, for example: length, flatMap,

and s. Camel-case names of classes and traits should start with an upper case

letter, for example: BigInt, List, and UnbalancedTreeMap.

Note

One consequence of using a trailing underscore in an identiﬁer is that if

you attempt, for example, to write a declaration like this,

“val name_: Int = 1”, you’ll get a compiler error. The compiler will

think you are trying to declare a val named “name_:”. To get this to

compile, you would need to insert an extra space before the colon, as in:

“val name_ : Int = 1”.

One way in which Scala’s conventions depart from Java’s involves con-

stant names. In Scala, the word constant does not just mean val. Even

though a val does remain constant after it is initialized, it is still a variable.

For example, method parameters are vals, but each time the method is called

those vals can hold different values. A constant is more permanent. For ex-

ample, scala.Math.Pi is deﬁned to be the double value closest to the real

value of π , the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. This value

is unlikely to change ever, thus, Pi is clearly a constant. You can also use

constants to give names to values that would otherwise be magic numbers in

your code: literal values with no explanation, which in the worst case appear

in multiple places. You may also want to deﬁne constants for use in pattern

matching, a use case that will be described in Section 15.2. In Java, the con-

vention is to give constants names that are all upper case, with underscores

separating the words, such as MAX_VALUE or PI. In Scala, the convention is

merely that the ﬁrst character should be upper case. Thus, constants named

in the Java style, such as X_OFFSET, will work as Scala constants, but the

Scala convention is to use camel case for constants, such as XOffset.

An operator identiﬁer consists of one or more operator characters. Oper-

ator characters are printable ASCII characters such as +, :, ?, ~ or #.

Here

In Section 16.5, you’ll see that sometimes you may want to give a special kind of class

known as a case class a name consisting solely of operator characters. For example, the Scala

API contains a class named ::, which facilitates pattern matching on Lists.

More precisely, an operator character belongs to the Unicode set of mathematical sym-

bols(Sm) or other symbols(So), or to the 7-bit ASCII characters that are not letters, digits,

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Section 6.10 Chapter 6 · Functional Objects 143

are some examples of operator identiﬁers:

+ ++ ::: <?> :->

The Scala compiler will internally “mangle” operator identiﬁers to turn

them into legal Java identiﬁers with embedded $ characters. For instance, the

identiﬁer :-> would be represented internally as $colon$minus$greater.

If you ever wanted to access this identiﬁer from Java code, you’d need to use

this internal representation.

Because operator identiﬁers in Scala can become arbitrarily long, there is

a small difference between Java and Scala. In Java, the input x<-y would be

parsed as four lexical symbols, so it would be equivalent to x < - y. In Scala,

<- would be parsed as a single identiﬁer, giving x <- y. If you want the ﬁrst

interpretation, you need to separate the < and the - characters by a space.

This is unlikely to be a problem in practice, as very few people would write

x<-y in Java without inserting spaces or parentheses between the operators.

A mixed identiﬁer consists of an alphanumeric identiﬁer, which is fol-

lowed by an underscore and an operator identiﬁer. For example, unary_+

used as a method name deﬁnes a unary + operator. Or, myvar_= used as

method name deﬁnes an assignment operator. In addition, the mixed identi-

ﬁer form myvar_= is generated by the Scala compiler to support properties;

more on that in Chapter 18.

A literal identiﬁer is an arbitrary string enclosed in back ticks (` . . . `).

Some examples of literal identiﬁers are:

`x` `<clinit>` `yield`

The idea is that you can put any string that’s accepted by the runtime

as an identiﬁer between back ticks. The result is always a Scala identiﬁer.

This works even if the name contained in the back ticks would be a Scala

reserved word. A typical use case is accessing the static yield method in

Java’s Thread class. You cannot write Thread.yield() because yield is

a reserved word in Scala. However, you can still name the method in back

ticks, e.g., Thread.`yield`().

parentheses, square brackets, curly braces, single or double quote, or an underscore, period,

semi-colon, comma, or back tick character.

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Section 6.11 Chapter 6 · Functional Objects 144

6.11 Method overloading

Back to class Rational. With the latest changes, you can now do addition

and multiplication operations in a natural style on rational numbers. But one

thing still missing is mixed arithmetic. For instance, you cannot multiply a

rational number by an integer, because the operands of

always have to be

Rationals. So for a rational number r you can’t write r

2. You must write

new Rational(2), which is not as nice.

To make Rational even more convenient, we’ll add new methods to the

class that perform mixed addition and multiplication on rational numbers and

integers. While we’re at it, we’ll add methods for subtraction and division

too. The result is shown in Listing 6.5.

There are now two versions each of the arithmetic methods: one that

takes a rational as its argument and another that takes an integer. In other

words, each of these method names is overloaded, because each name is

now being used by multiple methods. For example, the name + is used

by one method that takes a Rational and another that takes an Int. In a

method call, the compiler picks the version of an overloaded method that

correctly matches the types of the arguments. For instance, if the argument

y in x.+(y) is a Rational, the compiler will pick the method + that takes

a Rational parameter. But if the argument is an integer, the compiler will

pick the method + that takes an Int parameter instead. If you try this:

scala> val x = new Rational(2, 3)

x: Rational = 2/3

scala> x

res13: Rational = 4/9

scala> x

res14: Rational = 4/3

You’ll see that the

method invoked is determined in each case by the type

of the right operand.

Note

Scala’s process of overloaded method resolution is very similar to Java’s.

In every case, the chosen overloaded version is the one that best matches

the static types of the arguments. Sometimes there is no unique best

matching version; in that case the compiler will give you an “ambiguous

reference” error.

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Section 6.11 Chapter 6 · Functional Objects 145

class Rational(n: Int, d: Int) {

require(d != 0)

private val g = gcd(n.abs, d.abs)

val numer = n / g

val denom = d / g

def this(n: Int) = this(n, 1)

def + (that: Rational): Rational =

new Rational(

numer

that.denom + that.numer

denom,

denom

that.denom

)

def + (i: Int): Rational =

new Rational(numer + i

denom, denom)

def - (that: Rational): Rational =

new Rational(

numer

that.denom - that.numer

denom,

denom

that.denom

)

def - (i: Int): Rational =

new Rational(numer - i

denom, denom)

def

(that: Rational): Rational =

new Rational(numer

that.numer, denom

that.denom)

def

(i: Int): Rational =

new Rational(numer

i, denom)

def / (that: Rational): Rational =

new Rational(numer

that.denom, denom

that.numer)

def / (i: Int): Rational =

new Rational(numer, denom

override def toString = numer +"/"+ denom

private def gcd(a: Int, b: Int): Int =

if (b == 0) a else gcd(b, a % b)

}

Listing 6.5 · Rational with overloaded methods.

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Section 6.12 Chapter 6 · Functional Objects 146

6.12 Implicit conversions

Now that you can write r

2, you might also want to swap the operands, as

in 2

r. Unfortunately this does not work yet:

scala> 2

<console>:7: error: overloaded method value

with

alternatives (Double)Double <and> (Float)Float <and>

(Long)Long <and> (Int)Int <and> (Char)Int <and> (Short)Int

<and> (Byte)Int cannot be applied to (Rational)

The problem here is that 2

r is equivalent to 2.

(r), so it is a method

call on the number 2, which is an integer. But the Int class contains no

multiplication method that takes a Rational argument—it couldn’t because

class Rational is not a standard class in the Scala library.

However, there is another way to solve this problem in Scala: You can

create an implicit conversion that automatically converts integers to rational

numbers when needed. Try adding this line in the interpreter:

scala> implicit def intToRational(x: Int) = new Rational(x)

This deﬁnes a conversion method from Int to Rational. The implicit

modiﬁer in front of the method tells the compiler to apply it automatically in

a number of situations. With the conversion deﬁned, you can now retry the

example that failed before:

scala> val r = new Rational(2,3)

r: Rational = 2/3

scala> 2

res16: Rational = 4/3

Note that for an implicit conversion to work, it needs to be in scope. If

you place the implicit method deﬁnition inside class Rational, it won’t be

in scope in the interpreter. For now, you’ll need to deﬁne it directly in the

interpreter.

As you can glimpse from this example, implicit conversions are a very

powerful technique for making libraries more ﬂexible and more convenient

to use. Because they are so powerful, they can also be easily misused. You’ll

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Section 6.13 Chapter 6 · Functional Objects 147

ﬁnd out more on implicit conversions, including ways to bring them into

scope where they are needed, in Chapter 21.

6.13 A word of caution

As this chapter has demonstrated, creating methods with operator names and

deﬁning implicit conversions can help you design libraries for which client

code is concise and easy to understand. Scala gives you a great deal of power

to design such easy-to-use libraries, but please bear in mind that with power

comes responsibility.

If used unartfully, both operator methods and implicit conversions can

give rise to client code that is hard to read and understand. Because im-

plicit conversions are applied implicitly by the compiler, not explicitly writ-

ten down in the source code, it can be non-obvious to client programmers

what implicit conversions are being applied. And although operator meth-

ods will usually make client code more concise, they will only make it more

readable to the extent client programmers will be able to recognize and re-

member the meaning of each operator.

The goal you should keep in mind as you design libraries is not merely

enabling concise client code, but readable, understandable client code. Con-

ciseness will often be a big part of that readability, but you can take concise-

ness too far. By designing libraries that enable tastefully concise and at the

same time understandable client code, you can help those client program-

mers work productively.

6.14 Conclusion

In this chapter, you saw more aspects of classes in Scala. You saw how to

add parameters to a class, deﬁne several constructors, deﬁne operators as

methods, and customize classes so that they are natural to use. Maybe most

importantly, you saw that deﬁning and using immutable objects is a quite

natural way to code in Scala.

Although the ﬁnal version of Rational shown in this chapter fulﬁlls the

requirements set forth at the beginning of the chapter, it could still be im-

proved. We will in fact return to this example later in the book. For example,

in Chapter 28, you’ll learn how to override equals and hashcode to allow

Rationals to behave better when compared with == or placed into hash ta-

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Section 6.14 Chapter 6 · Functional Objects 148

bles. In Chapter 21, you’ll learn how to place implicit method deﬁnitions

in a companion object for Rational, so they can be more easily placed into

scope when client programmers are working with Rationals.

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Chapter 7

Built-in Control Structures

Scala has only a handful of built-in control structures. The only control struc-

tures are if, while, for, try, match, and function calls. The reason Scala

has so few is that it has included function literals since its inception. Instead

of accumulating one higher-level control structure after another in the base

syntax, Scala accumulates them in libraries. Chapter 9 will show precisely

how that is done. This chapter will show those few control structures that are

built in.

One thing you will notice is that almost all of Scala’s control structures

result in some value. This is the approach taken by functional languages, in

which programs are viewed as computing a value, thus the components of a

program should also compute values. You can also view this approach as the

logical conclusion of a trend already present in imperative languages. In im-

perative languages, function calls can return a value, even though having the

called function update an output variable passed as an argument would work

just as well. In addition, imperative languages often have a ternary operator

(such as the ?: operator of C, C++, and Java), which behaves exactly like

if, but results in a value. Scala adopts this ternary operator model, but calls

it if. In other words, Scala’s if can result in a value. Scala then continues

this trend by having for, try, and match also result in values.

Programmers can use these result values to simplify their code, just as

they use return values of functions. Without this facility, the programmer

must create temporary variables just to hold results that are calculated inside

a control structure. Removing these temporary variables makes the code a

little simpler, and it also prevents many bugs where you set the variable in

one branch but forget to set it in another.

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Section 7.1 Chapter 7 · Built-in Control Structures 150

Overall, Scala’s basic control structures, minimal as they are, are sufﬁ-

cient to provide all of the essentials from imperative languages. Further, they

allow you to shorten your code by consistently having result values. To show

you how all of this works, this chapter takes a closer look at each of Scala’s

basic control structures.

7.1 If expressions

Scala’s if works just like in many other languages. It tests a condition and

then executes one of two code branches depending on whether the condition

holds true. Here is a common example, written in an imperative style:

var filename = "default.txt"

if (!args.isEmpty)

filename = args(0)

This code declares a variable, filename, and initializes it to a default value.

It then uses an if expression to check whether any arguments were supplied

to the program. If so, it changes the variable to hold the value speciﬁed in

the argument list. If no arguments were supplied, it leaves the variable set to

the default value.

This code can be written more nicely, because as mentioned in Step 3

in Chapter 2, Scala’s if is an expression that results in a value. Listing 7.1

shows how you can accomplish the same effect as the previous example, but

without using any vars:

val filename =

if (!args.isEmpty) args(0)

else "default.txt"

Listing 7.1 · Scala’s idiom for conditional initialization.

This time, the if has two branches. If args is not empty, the initial

element, args(0), is chosen. Else, the default value is chosen. The if ex-

pression results in the chosen value, and the filename variable is initialized

with that value. This code is slightly shorter, but its real advantage is that it

uses a val instead of a var. Using a val is the functional style, and it helps

you in much the same way as a final variable in Java. It tells readers of the

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