Scala Functional Programming Patterns

Functors

Let's say we have a function, X => Y. This function is transformed to another function List[X] => List[Y]. A higher order function that does this transformation is Functor, as shown in the following diagram:

Figure 9.1: Functor translation

Here, we chose the List collection for ease of understanding. Instead of List, any collection will work (Refer to the next section for this):

object Functor extends App {

  def functor[X, Y](f: X => Y): List[X] => List[Y] = { // 1
    def fun : (List[X]) => List[Y] = (arg: List[X]) => arg match {
      case Nil => Nil
      case x :: xs => f(x) :: fun(xs)
    }
    fun
  }

  val p = List("Hi", "there")

 def doubleEachChar(s: ...