Question

I have an input something like this: "1 2 3 4 5".

What I would like to do, is to create a set of new variables, let a be the first one of the sequence, b the second, and xs the rest as a sequence (obviously I can do it in 3 different lines, but I would like to use multiple assignment).

A bit of search helped me by finding the right-ignoring sequence patterns, which I was able to use:

val Array(a, b, xs @ _*) = "1 2 3 4 5".split(" ")

What I do not understand is that why doesn’t it work if I try it with a tuple? I get an error for this:

val (a, b, xs @ _*) = "1 2 3 4 5".split(" ")

The error message is:

<console>:1: error: illegal start of simple pattern

Are there any alternatives for multiple-assignment without using Array?

I have just started playing with Scala a few days ago, so please bear with me 🙂 Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Other answers tell you why you can’t use tuples, but arrays are awkward for this purpose. I prefer lists:

val a :: b :: xs = "1 2 3 4 5".split(" ").toList