Chapter 5. Pattern Matching

So far, we've explored some of the basic functional cornerstones of Scala: immutable data types and the passing of functions as parameters. The third cornerstone of functional programming is pattern matching. At first glance, pattern matching looks like Java's switch statement. However, pattern matching provides a powerful tool for declaring business logic in a concise and maintainable way. Scala blends traditional functional programming pattern matching with object-oriented concepts to provide a very powerful mechanism for writing programs.

In this chapter, we're going to explore the basics of pattern matching. Then we're going to see how Scala's case classes bridge between object-oriented data encapsulation and function ...

Get Beginning Scala now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.