Outdated Notice
You have syntax List(1, 2, 3) to create a list of three integers and Map('A' -> 1, 'C' -> 2) to create a map with two bindings. This is actually a universal feature of Scala collections. You can take any collection name and follow it by a list of elements in parentheses. The result will be a new collection with the given elements. Here are some more examples:
Traversable() // An empty traversable object
List() // The empty list
List(1.0, 2.0) // A list with elements 1.0, 2.0
Vector(1.0, 2.0) // A vector with elements 1.0, 2.0
Iterator(1, 2, 3) // An iterator returning three integers.
Set(dog, cat, bird) // A set of three animals
HashSet(dog, cat, bird) // A hash set of the same animals
Map('a' -> 7, 'b' -> 0) // A map from characters to integers
“Under the covers” each of the above lines is a call to the apply method of some object. For instance, the third line above expands to
List.apply(1.0, 2.0)
So this is a call to the apply method of the companion object of the List class. That method takes an arbitrary number of arguments and constructs a list from them. Every collection class in the Scala library has a companion object with such an apply method. It does not matter whether the collection class represents a concrete implementation, like List, or Stream or Vector, do, or whether it is an abstract base class such as Seq, Set or Traversable. In the latter case, calling apply will produce some default implementation of the abstract base class. Examples:
scala> List(1, 2, 3)
res17: List[Int] = List(1, 2, 3)
scala> Traversable(1, 2, 3)
res18: Traversable[Int] = List(1, 2, 3)
scala> mutable.Traversable(1, 2, 3)
res19: scala.collection.mutable.Traversable[Int] = ArrayBuffer(1, 2, 3)
Besides apply, every collection companion object also defines a member empty, which returns an empty collection. So instead of List() you could write List.empty, instead of Map(), Map.empty, and so on.
Descendants of Seq classes provide also other factory operations in their companion objects. These are summarized in the following table. In short, there’s
concat, which concatenates an arbitrary number of traversables together,fillandtabulate, which generate single or multidimensional sequences of given dimensions initialized by some expression or tabulating function,range, which generates integer sequences with some constant step length, anditerate, which generates the sequence resulting from repeated application of a function to a start element.
Factory Methods for Sequences
| WHAT IT IS | WHAT IT DOES |
|---|---|
S.empty |
The empty sequence. |
S(x, y, z) |
A sequence consisting of elements x, y, z. |
S.concat(xs, ys, zs) |
The sequence obtained by concatenating the elements of xs, ys, zs. |
S.fill(n){e} |
A sequence of length n where each element is computed by expression e. |
S.fill(m, n){e} |
A sequence of sequences of dimension m×n where each element is computed by expression e. (exists also in higher dimensions). |
S.tabulate(n){f} |
A sequence of length n where the element at each index i is computed by f(i). |
S.tabulate(m, n){f} |
A sequence of sequences of dimension m×n where the element at each index (i, j) is computed by f(i, j). (exists also in higher dimensions). |
S.range(start, end) |
The sequence of integers start … end-1. |
S.range(start, end, step) |
The sequence of integers starting with start and progressing by step increments up to, and excluding, the end value. |
S.iterate(x, n)(f) |
The sequence of length n with elements x, f(x), f(f(x)), … |