Scala while(true) type mismatch? Infinite loop in scala?

Question

Why following code

def doSomething() = \"Something\"

var availableRetries: Int = 10

def process(): String = {
  while (true) {
    availableRetries -= 1
    tr         


        

Answer 1

The compiler isn't smart enough to know that you can't exit the while loop, unfortunately. It's easy to trick, though, even if you can't sensibly generate a member of the return type--just throw an exception.

def process(): String = {
  while (true) {
    ...
  }
  throw new Exception("How did I end up here?")
}

Now the compiler will realize that even if it escapes the while loop, it can't return a value there, so it doesn't worry that the while loop has return type Unit (i.e. does not return a value).