Question

I was going through some exercises and noticed the following behavior for matching of tuple2. Is there a particular reason for this?

 def test(x: Any): Unit= x match{
  case i: Int => println("int")
  case b: Boolean => println("bool")
  case ti: (_, Int) => println("tuple2 with int")
  case tb: (_, Boolean)=> println("tuple2 with boolean")
  case _ => println("other")
  }                                                

test(false) //prints bool
test(3) ///prints int
test((1,3)) //prints tuple with int
test((1,true)) //prints tuple with int 

If i exchange the ti and tb cases, then the (1,3) prints tuple2 with boolean. I assume there is some type casting going on here, but I’m unclear why.

Can someone give me a quick explanation.
Thanks

Answer 1

Type erasure. It can’t tell what the types are inside the Tuple at runtime. It will compile fine, but it should emit a warning. This is what happens when I do it in :paste mode in the REPL:

scala> :paste
// Entering paste mode (ctrl-D to finish)

def test(x: Any): Unit= x match{
  case i: Int => println("int")
  case b: Boolean => println("bool")
  case ti: (_, Int) => println("tuple2 with int")
  case tb: (_, Boolean)=> println("tuple2 with boolean")
  case _ => println("other")
  }                                                

// Exiting paste mode, now interpreting.

<console>:10: warning: non-variable type argument Int in type pattern (_, Int) is unchecked since it is eliminated by erasure
         case ti: (_, Int) => println("tuple2 with int")
                  ^
<console>:11: warning: non-variable type argument Boolean in type pattern (_, Boolean) is unchecked since it is eliminated by erasure
         case tb: (_, Boolean)=> println("tuple2 with boolean")
                  ^
<console>:11: warning: unreachable code
         case tb: (_, Boolean)=> println("tuple2 with boolean")
                                        ^
test: (x: Any)Unit

Notice the last warning, it says the (_, Boolean) is unreachable because the (_, Int) will match on every Tuple2, courtesy of type erasure.