Question

After going through some examples on the web I realize that there is a way to write an anonymous function without the underscore when only a single arg. Also, I’m experimenting with the “span” method on List, which I never knew existed. Anyway, here is my REPL session:

scala> val nums = List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
nums: List[Int] = List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

scala> nums span (_ != 3)
res0: (List[Int], List[Int]) = (List(1, 2),List(3, 4, 5))

scala> nums span (3 !=)
res1: (List[Int], List[Int]) = (List(1, 2),List(3, 4, 5))

So far so good. But when I try to use the “less than” operator:

scala> nums span (_ < 3)
res2: (List[Int], List[Int]) = (List(1, 2),List(3, 4, 5))

scala> nums span (3 <)
res3: (List[Int], List[Int]) = (List(),List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5))

Why is this behaving differently?

Answer 1

scala> nums span (_ < 3)
res0: (List[Int], List[Int]) = (List(1, 2),List(3, 4, 5))

scala> nums span (3 >)
res1: (List[Int], List[Int]) = (List(1, 2),List(3, 4, 5))

3 < is a shortcut to 3 < _, which creates a partially applied function from method call.