Question

Is there a way to transform only the first element of a list without doing something super hacky like:

val head = l1.head
val tail = l1.tail
val l2   = change(head) :: tail

updated() looks like it could work, but isn’t much of an improvement:

val head = l1.head
val l2   = l.update(0, change(head))

I’d love something like:

val l2   = l1.updateHead(change(_))

Is there anything like that?

Answer 1

you could try using pattern matching

val l2 = l1 match{
    case Nil   => Nil
    case x::xs => change(x)::xs
}

That way you don’t have to worry if head actually returns an element