Question

Is it possible to rewrite the following code

for (i <- x) {
  if (i==x.first) {
    // do sth
  } else if (i==x.last) {
    // do sth
  } else {
    // do sth
  }
}

using pattern matching like

for (i <- x) i match { 
  case `x.first` => // do sth
  case `x.last` => // do sth
  case _ => // do sth
}

I know we can use guard, or evaluate x.first and x.last in advance and store them in other vals to quote here, but that’s just ugly. Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

One clean way to do it would be to define extractors +: and :+ for yourself:

object +: {
  def unapply[CC, A, That](seq: CC)(implicit asSeq: CC => Seq[A], cbf: CanBuildFrom[CC, A, That]): Option[(A, That)] = {
    if (seq.nonEmpty)
      Some(seq.head, cbf(seq) ++= seq.tail result)
    else
      None
  }
}

object :+ {
  def unapply[CC, A, That](seq: CC)(implicit asSeq: CC => Seq[A], cbf: CanBuildFrom[CC, A, That]): Option[(That, A)] = {
    if (seq.nonEmpty)
      Some(cbf(seq) ++= seq.dropRight(1) result, seq.last)
    else
      None
  }
}

Then you can simply do:

val x = Seq(1, 2, 3, 4)
val first +: middle :+ last = x

println("first is %s".format(first))
for (y <- middle)
  println("middle contains %s".format(y))
println("last is %s".format(last))

Which prints:

first is 1
middle contains 2
middle contains 3
last is 4