Value assignment inside for-loop in Scala

Question

Is there any difference between this code:

    for(term <- term_array) {
        val list = hashmap.get(term)
        ...
    }

and:

    for(term <- term_array; val list = hashmap.get(term)) {
        ...
    }

Inside the loop I'm changing the hashmap with something like this

hashmap.put(term, string :: list)

While checking for the head of list it seems to be outdated somehow when using the second code snippet.

Answer 1

The difference between the two is, that the first one is a definition which is created by pattern matching and the second one is a value inside a function literal. See Programming in Scala, Section 23.1 For Expressions:

  for {
    p <- persons              // a generator
    n = p.name                // a definition
    if (n startsWith "To")    // a filter
  } yield n

You see the real difference when you compile sources with scalac -Xprint:typer <filename>.scala:

object X {
  val x1 = for (i <- (1 to 5); x = i*2) yield x
  val x2 = for (i <- (1 to 5)) yield { val x = i*2; x }
}

After code transforming by the compiler you will get something like this:

private[this] val x1: scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[Int] =
  scala.this.Predef.intWrapper(1).to(5).map[(Int, Int), scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[(Int, Int)]](((i: Int) => {
    val x: Int = i.*(2);
    scala.Tuple2.apply[Int, Int](i, x)
  }))(immutable.this.IndexedSeq.canBuildFrom[(Int, Int)]).map[Int, scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[Int]]((
    (x$1: (Int, Int)) => (x$1: (Int, Int) @unchecked) match {
      case (_1: Int, _2: Int)(Int, Int)((i @ _), (x @ _)) => x
    }))(immutable.this.IndexedSeq.canBuildFrom[Int]);

private[this] val x2: scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[Int] =
  scala.this.Predef.intWrapper(1).to(5).map[Int, scala.collection.immutable.IndexedSeq[Int]](((i: Int) => {
    val x: Int = i.*(2);
    x
  }))(immutable.this.IndexedSeq.canBuildFrom[Int]);

This can be simplified to:

val x1 = (1 to 5).map {i =>
    val x: Int = i * 2
    (i, x)
  }.map {
    case (i, x) => x
  }

val x2 = (1 to 5).map {i =>
    val x = i * 2
    x
  }