Question

With Scala’s pattern matching I would like to confirm not only that two Strings are equal but for example, whether a String starts with, ends, or is contained in another etc.

I experimented with case classes and extractor objects, neither giving me a concise solution. So the solution I came up with looks like the following:

class StrMatches(private val str: Option[String]) {

  def ^(prefix: String) = str.exists(_.startsWith(prefix))

  def §(suffix: String) = str.exists(_.endsWith(suffix))

  def %(infix: String) = str.exists(_.contains(infix))

  def ~(approx: String) = str.exists(_.equalsIgnoreCase(approx))

  def /(regex: scala.util.matching.Regex) = str.collect({ case regex() => true }).isDefined

  def °(len: Int) = str.exists(_.length == len)

  def °°(len: (Int, Int)) = str.exists(a => a.length >= len._1 && a.length <= len._2)

  def `\\s*` = str.exists(_.trim.isEmpty)

  override def toString = str.mkString

}

object StrMatches {

  implicit def apply(x: Str) = new StrMatches(x)

  def unapply(x: StrMatches) = x.str

  implicit def unwrap(x: StrMatches) = x.toString

}

A client using the StrMatches class could look like the following:

object TestApp extends App {
  val str = "foobar"
  val strMatches = StrMatches(str)
  if (strMatches ^ "foo") {
    println(strMatches)
  }
  if (strMatches § "bar") {
    println(strMatches)
  }
  if (strMatches % "ob") {
    println(strMatches)
  }
}

As opposed to writing:

object TestApp extends App {
  val str: String = null // Just as an illustration for Scala interfacing Java.
  if (str != null) {
    if (str.startsWith("foo")) {
      println(str)
    }
    if (strMatches.endsWith("bar")) {
      println(str)
    }
    if (strMatches.contains("ob")) {
      println(strMatches)
    }
  }
}

With what kind of solutions would you come up with?

Answer 1

You could use regular expressions. Then you could use pattern matching (which I think was the original intent of your question):

object TestApp extends App {
    val str = "foobar"

    val StartsWithFooRE = """^foo.*""".r
    val EndsWithBarRE = """.*bar$""".r
    val ContainsBoRE = """.*bo.*""".r

    str match {
        case StartsWithFooRE() => println(str)
        case EndsWithBarRE() => println(str)
        case ContainsBoRE() => println(str)
        case _ =>
    }
}

To make this more convenient, you could define an object with factory methods to construct the regular expressions. However, due to how pattern matching works, you’ll still have to define the expressions outside of the match:

import scala.util.matching.Regex

object RegexFactory {
    def startsWith(str: String) = new Regex("^%s.*" format str)
    def endsWith(str: String) = new Regex(".*%s$" format str)
    def contains(str: String) = new Regex(".*%s.*" format str)
}


object TestApp extends App {    
    val str = "foobar"

    import RegexFactory._

    val StartsWithFooRE = startsWith("foo")
    val EndsWithBarRE = endsWith("bar")
    val ContainsBoRE = contains("bo")

    str match {
        case StartsWithFooRE() => println(str)
        case EndsWithBarRE() => println(str)
        case ContainsBoRE() => println(str)
        case _ =>
    }
}