Question

Lists are immutable in Scala, so I’m trying to figure out how I can “remove” – really, create a new collection – that element and then close the gap created in the list. This sounds to me like it would be a great place to use map, but I don’t know how to get started in this instance.

Courses is a list of strings. I need this loop because I actually have several lists that I will need to remove the element at that index from (I’m using multiple lists to store data associated across lists, and I’m doing this by simply ensuring that the indices will always correspond across lists).

  for (i <- 0 until courses.length){
    if (input == courses(i) {
    //I need a map call on each list here to remove that element
    //this element is not guaranteed to be at the front or the end of the list
    }
  }
}

Let me add some detail to the problem. I have four lists that are associated with each other by index; one list stores the course names, one stores the time the class begins in a simple int format (ie 130), one stores either “am” or “pm”, and one stores the days of the classes by int (so “MWF” evals to 1, “TR” evals to 2, etc). I don’t know if having multiple this is the best or the “right” way to solve this problem, but these are all the tools I have (first-year comp sci student that hasn’t programmed seriously since I was 16). I’m writing a function to remove the corresponding element from each lists, and all I know is that 1) the indices correspond and 2) the user inputs the course name. How can I remove the corresponding element from each list using filterNot? I don’t think I know enough about each list to use higher order functions on them.

Answer 1

This is the use case of filter:

scala> List(1,2,3,4,5)
res0: List[Int] = List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

scala> res0.filter(_ != 2)
res1: List[Int] = List(1, 3, 4, 5)

You want to use map when you are transforming all the elements of a list.