How to reduce the number of objects created in Scala?

Question

I\'m programming a computer graphics application in Scala which uses a RGB class to return the color at a point in the image. As you can imagine, the function which return the c

Answer 1

You could have an interface that returns a simple Int. Then you could use implicit conversions to treat an Int as an RGB object where needed.

case class RBGInt(red: Int, green: Int, blue: Int) {
   // ...
}

object Conversions { 

  implicit def toRGBInt(p: Int) = {
    val (r, g, b) = /* some bitmanipulation to turn p into 3 ints */
    RGBInt(r, g, b)
  }

}

Then you could treat any Int as an RGBInt where you think it makes sense:

type RGB = Int // useful in documenting interfaces that consume
               // or returns Ints which represent RGBs

def getPixelRGB(img: Image, x: Int, y: Int): RGB = {
  // returns an Int
}

def someMethod(..) = {
  import Conversions._
  val px: RGB = getPixelRGB(...) // px is actually an Int
  px.red // px, an Int is lifted to an RGBInt
}