Pattern matching method calls

Question
1

Is there a way of using pattern matching to solve this problem?

def myFun(aVar : SomeType) {
   val ans = if (aVar.isX()) "x"
              else if (aVar.isY()) "y"
              else if (aVar.isZ()) "z"
              else ...
}

The SomeType is an external library class. I wish to find out what sort of thing it is by calling different library isXYZ() methods and then doing certain actions according to the result?

2

Not sure if using pattern matching is an improvement, but you can (untested):

def myFun(aVar : SomeType) {

** val ans = aVar match {**

** case _ if(aVar.isX()) => “x”**

** case _ if(aVar.isY()) => “y”**

** case _ if(aVar.isZ()) => “z”**

** …**

** }**

}

3

If you use this distinction in several places, you can create extractor objects. But I’m also not sure if that is an improvement over if-else, if you do not actually extract a part of the SomeType:

object IsX { def unapply(o: SomeType): Boolean = o.isX }
object IsY { def unapply(o: SomeType): Boolean = o.isY }
object IsZ { def unapply(o: SomeType): Boolean = o.isZ }

val ans = aVar match {
    case IsX() => "x"
    case IsY() => "y"
    case IsZ() => "z"
}

But if you are extracting some value, you can define unapply to return an Option of your extracted type and match will assign that to a pattern variable, which is a more typical use case for pattern matching:

object IsX { def unapply(o: SomeType): Option[XType] = if(o.isX) Some(o.asXType()) else None }

aVar match {
    case IsX(xTypeVar) => xTypeVar.doSomething()
    // ...
}

See also https://docs.scala-lang.org/tour/extractor-objects.html