Question

Is there a Pattern in Scala that can add a method to an Array object?

I am thinking of the implicit conversion of Int to RichInt. But that can’t be done as Array is a final class.

Answer 1

As long as you avoid name collisions with any other implicit on Array (e.g. ArrayOps in 2.8, which adds the collections methods), you can extend using the normal implicit pimp-my-library pattern:

class FooArray[T](at: Array[T]) {
  def foo() = at.length*at.length
}
implicit def array2foo[T](at: Array[T]) = new FooArray(at)
scala> Array(1,2,3).foo
res2: Int = 9