Trait Traversable Contents

Trait `Traversable`

At the top of the collection hierarchy is trait Traversable. Its only abstract operation is foreach:

def foreach[U](f: Elem => U)

Collection classes that implement Traversable just need to define this method; all other methods can be inherited from Traverable.

The foreach method is meant to traverse all elements of the collection, and apply the given operation, f, to each element. The type of the operation is Elem => U, where Elem is the type of the collection's elements and U is an arbitrary result type. The invocation of f is done for its side effect only; in fact any function result of f is discarded by foreach.

Traversable also defines many concrete methods, which are all listed in The following table. These methods fall into the following categories:

Addition, ++, which appends two traversables together, or appends all elements of an iterator to a traversable.
Map operations map, flatMap, and collect, which produce a new collection by applying some function to collection elements.
Conversions toArray, toList, toIterable, toSeq, toIndexedSeq, toStream, toSet, toMap, which turn a Traversable collection into something more specific. All these conversions return their receiver argument unchanged if the run-time type of the collection already matches the demanded collection type. For instance, applying toList to a list will yield the list itself.
Copying operations copyToBuffer and copyToArray. As their names imply, these copy collection elements to a buffer or array, respectively.
Size info operations isEmpty, nonEmpty, size, and hasDefiniteSize: Traversable collections can be finite or infinite. An example of an infinite traversable collection is the stream of natural numbers Stream.from(0). The method hasDefiniteSize indicates whether a collection is possibly infinite. If hasDefiniteSize returns true, the collection is certainly finite. If it returns false, the collection has not been not fully elaborated yet, so it might be infinite or finite.
Element retrieval operations head, last, headOption, lastOption, and find. These select the first or last element of a collection, or else the first element matching a condition. Note, however, that not all collections have a well-defined meaning of what "first" and "last" means. For instance, a hash set might store elements according to their hash keys, which might change from run to run. In that case, the "first" element of a hash set could also be different for every run of a program. A collection is ordered if it always yields its elements in the same order. Most collections are ordered, but some (e.g. hash sets) are not-dropping the ordering gives a little bit of extra efficiency. Ordering is often essential to give reproducible tests and to help in debugging. That's why Scala collections give ordered alternatives for all collection types. For instance, the ordered alternative for HashSet is LinkedHashSet.
Sub-collection retrieval operations tail, init, slice, take, drop, takeWhile, dropWhile, filter, filterNot, withFilter. These all return some sub-collection identified by an index range or some predicate.
Subdivision operations splitAt, span, partition, groupBy, which split the elements of this collection into several sub-collections.
Element tests exists, forall, count which test collection elements with a given predicate.
Folds foldLeft, foldRight, /:, :\, reduceLeft, reduceRight which apply a binary operation to successive elements.
Specific folds sum, product, min, max, which work on collections of specific types (numeric or comparable).
String operations mkString, addString, stringPrefix, which give alternative ways of converting a collection to a string.
View operations, consisting of two overloaded variants of the view method. A view is a collection that's evaluated lazily. You'll learn more about views in elsewhere.

Operations in class Traversable
What it is	What it does
Abstract Method:
`xs` `foreach` `f`	Executes function `f` for every element of `xs`.
Addition:
`xs` `++` `ys`	A collection consisting of the elements of both `xs` and `ys`. `ys` is a TraversableOnce collection, i.e., either a Traversableor an Iterator.
Maps:
`xs` `map` `f`	The collection obtained from applying the function `f` to every element in `xs`.
`xs` `flatMap` `f`	The collection obtained from applying the collection-valued function `f` to every element in `xs` and concatenating the results.
`xs` `collect` `f`	The collection obtained from applying the partial function `f` to every element in `xs` for which it is defined and collecting the results.
Conversions:
`xs.toArray`	Converts the collection to an array.
`xs.toList`	Converts the collection to a list.
`xs.toIterable`	Converts the collection to an iterable.
`xs.toSeq`	Converts the collection to a sequence.
`xs.toIndexedSeq`	Converts the collection to an indexed sequence.
`xs.toStream`	Converts the collection to a lazily computed stream.
`xs.toSet`	Converts the collection to a set.
`xs.toMap`	Converts the collection of key/value pairs to a map. If the collection does not have pairs as elements, calling this operation results in a static type error.
Copying:
`xs` `copyToBuffer` `buf`	Copies all elements of the collection to buffer `buf`.
`xs` `copyToArray(arr,` `s,` `n)`	Copies at most `n` elements of the collection to array `arr` starting at index `s`. The last two arguments are optional.
Size info:
`xs.isEmpty`	Tests whether the collection is empty.
`xs.nonEmpty`	Tests whether the collection contains elements.
`xs.size`	The number of elements in the collection.
`xs.hasDefiniteSize`	True if `xs` is known to have finite size.
Element Retrieval:
`xs.head`	The first element of the collection (or, some element, if no order is defined).
`xs.headOption`	The first element of `xs` in an option value, or `None` if `xs` is empty.
`xs.last`	The last element of the collection (or, some element, if no order is defined).
`xs.lastOption`	The last element of `xs` in an option value, or `None` if `xs` is empty.
`xs` `find` `p`	An option containing the first element in `xs` that satisfies `p`, or `None` is no element qualifies.
Subcollections:
`xs.tail`	The rest of the collection except `xs.head`.
`xs.init`	The rest of the collection except `xs.last`.
`xs` `slice` `(from,` `to)`	A collection consisting of elements in some index range of `xs` (from `from` up to, and excluding `to`).
`xs` `take` `n`	A collection consisting of the first `n` elements of `xs` (or, some arbitrary `n` elements, if no order is defined).
`xs` `drop` `n`	The rest of the collection except `xs` `take` `n`.
`xs` `takeWhile` `p`	The longest prefix of elements in the collection that all satisfy `p`.
`xs` `dropWhile` `p`	The collection without the longest prefix of elements that all satisfy `p`.
`xs` `filter` `p`	The collection consisting of those elements of `xs` that satisfy the predicate `p`.
`xs` `wtihFilter` `p`	A non-strict filter of this collection. Subsequent calls to `map`, `flatMap`, `foreach`, and `withFilter` will only apply to those elements of `xs` for which the condition `p` is true.
`xs` `filterNot` `p`	The collection consisting of those elements of `xs` that do not satisfy the predicate `p`.
Subdivisions:
`xs` `splitAt` `n`	Split `xs` at a position, giving the pair of collections `(xs` `take` `n,` `xs` `drop` `n)`.
`xs` `span` `p`	Split `xs` according to a predicate, giving the pair of collections `(xs` `takeWhile` `p,` `xs.dropWhile` `p)`.
`xs` `partition` `p`	Split `xs` into a pair of two collections; one with elements that satisfy the predicate `p`, the other with elements that do not, giving the pair of collections `(xs` `filter` `p,` `xs.filterNot` `p)`
`xs` `groupBy` `f`	Partition `xs` into a map of collections according to a discriminator function `f`.
Element Conditions:
`xs` `forall` `p`	A boolean indicating whether the predicate `p` holds for all elements of `xs`.
`xs` `exists` `p`	A boolean indicating whether the predicate `p` holds for some element in `xs`.
`xs` `count` `p`	The number of elements in `xs` that satisfy the predicate `p`.
Folds:
`(z` `/:` `xs)(op)`	Apply binary operation `op` between successive elements of `xs`, going left to right and starting with `z`.
`(xs` `:\` `z)(op)`	Apply binary operation `op` between successive elements of `xs`, going right to left and starting with `z`.
`xs.foldLeft(z)(op)`	Same as `(z` `/:` `xs)(op)`.
`xs.foldRight(z)(op)`	Same as `(xs` `:\` `z)(op)`.
`xs` `reduceLeft` `op`	Apply binary operation `op` between successive elements of non-empty collection `xs`, going left to right.
`xs` `reduceRight` `op`	Apply binary operation `op` between successive elements of non-empty collection `xs`, going right to left.
Specific Folds:
`xs.sum`	The sum of the numeric element values of collection `xs`.
`xs.product`	The product of the numeric element values of collection `xs`.
`xs.min`	The minimum of the ordered element values of collection `xs`.
`xs.max`	The maximum of the ordered element values of collection `xs`.
Strings:
`xs` `addString` `(b,` `start,` `sep,` `end)`	Adds a string to `StringBuilder` `b` that shows all elements of `xs` between separators `sep` enclosed in strings `start` and `end`. `start`, `sep`, `end` are all optional.
`xs` `mkString` `(start,` `sep,` `end)`	Converts the collection to a string that shows all elements of `xs` between separators `sep` enclosed in strings `start` and `end`. `start`, `sep`, `end` are all optional.
`xs.stringPrefix`	The collection name at the beginning of the string returned from `xs.toString`.
Views:
`xs.view`	Produces a view over `xs`.
`xs` `view` `(from,` `to)`	Produces a view that represents the elements in some index range of `xs`.

Next: Trait Iterable

Trait Traversable Contents

Trait Traversable

Trait `Traversable`