Objects Everywhere

Pure Object Orientation

A pure Object Oriented language is one where every value is an Object. Is Scala a pure Object Oriented language?

Conceptually, types such as Int or Boolean do not receive special treatment in Scala i.e. they are not primitive types and are just like any other Classes defined in package scala. For reasons of efficiency, the Scala compiler represents or maps scala.Int by 32 bit integers and scala.Boolean by Java's primitive Boolean, etc.

Primitive Classes as Objects

Scala compiler represents or maps scala.Boolean by Java's primitive Boolean, but it can be defined as a Class from the first principles without resorting to primitive Booleans:

package idealized.scala

abstract class Boolean extends AnyVal {
    def ifThenElse[T](t: => T, e: => T): T

    // The false and true here are also from the idealized.scala package
    def && (x: => Boolean): Boolean = ifThenElse(x, false)
    def || (x: => Boolean): Boolean = ifThenElse(true, x)
    def unary_!: Boolean            = ifThenElse(false, true)

    def == (x: Boolean): Boolean    = ifThenElse(x, x.unary_!)
    def != (x: Boolean): Boolean    = ifThenElse(x.unary_!, x)
...
}

object true extends Boolean {
    def ifThenElse[T](t: => T, e: => T) = t
}

object false extends Boolean {
    def ifThenElse[T](t: => T, e: => T) = e
}

So as seen above, in the method ifThenElse, arg t is the expression for the 'if then' part and arg e is the expression for the 'else' part. So basically instead of

let condition : idealized.scala.Boolean = ...
if (condition) x else y

since we are using our own implementation of boolean, the condition will evaluate using idealized.scala.Boolean instead of the scala.Boolean. Hence we will use it as:

condition.ifThenElse(x, y)

Similarly, we will use the other operators as:

let condition1 : idealized.scala.Boolean = ...
let condition2 : idealized.scala.Boolean = ...

condition1 && condition 2
condition1 == condition 2 
etc

Similarly the scala.Int can also be represented using classes.

Functions as Objects

A Scala method is a part of a class which has a name, a signature, optionally some annotations, where as a function in Scala is a complete object which can be assigned to a variable.

Functions are treated as Objects by Scala.

A => B is basically an abbreviation for scala.Function1[A,B] which is roughly defined as:

trait Function1[A, B] {
    def apply(x: A): B
}

So basically functions are objects with a apply() method. There are traits for Function2, Function3, ... Function22 for more parameters.

Expansion of Function Values

An Anonymous function such as

(x: Int) => x * x

is expanded to:

{ 
   class AnonFun extends Function1[Int, Int] {
      def apply(x: Int): x * x
   }
   new AnonFun
}

or, shorter using Anonymous class syntax:

new Function1[Int, Int] {
   def apply(x: Int): x * x
}

A function call, such as f(a, b), where f is a value of some class type, is expanded to

f.apply(a, b)

So the Object Oriented translation of

val f = (x: Int) => x * x
f(7)

would be

val f = new Function1[Int, Int] {
    def apply(x: Int) = x * x
}
f.apply(7)

Note that the apply method in this function is not an object, else it would expand to a new Function containing an apply method and cause an infinite loop.

Functions and Methods

A Function Type is (roughly) a type of the form (T1, ..., Tn) => U, which is a shorthand for the trait FunctionN in the standard library. Anonymous Functions and Method Values have function types, and function types can be used as part of value, variable and function declarations and definitions. In fact, it can be part of a method type.

A Method Type is a non-value type. That means there is no value - no object, no instance - with a method type. As mentioned above, a Method Value actually has a Function Type. A method type is a def declaration - everything about a def except its body.

Note that a method such as

def f(x: Int): Boolean = ...

is not itself a function value. But if f is used in a place where a Function type is expected, it is converted automatically to the function value

(x: Int) => f(x)

or, expanded:

new Function1[Int, Boolean] {
    def apply(x: Int) = f(x)
}