What are all the uses of an underscore in Scala?

Question

I\'ve taken a look at the list of surveys taken on scala-lang.org and noticed a curious question: \"Can you name all the uses of “_”?\". Can you? If yes, please do so here.

Answer 1

An excellent explanation of the uses of the underscore is Scala _ [underscore] magic.

Examples:

 def matchTest(x: Int): String = x match {
     case 1 => "one"
     case 2 => "two"
     case _ => "anything other than one and two"
 }

 expr match {
     case List(1,_,_) => " a list with three element and the first element is 1"
     case List(_*)  => " a list with zero or more elements "
     case Map[_,_] => " matches a map with any key type and any value type "
     case _ =>
 }

 List(1,2,3,4,5).foreach(print(_))
 // Doing the same without underscore: 
 List(1,2,3,4,5).foreach( a => print(a))

In Scala, _ acts similar to * in Java while importing packages.

// Imports all the classes in the package matching
import scala.util.matching._

// Imports all the members of the object Fun (static import in Java).
import com.test.Fun._

// Imports all the members of the object Fun but renames Foo to Bar
import com.test.Fun.{ Foo => Bar , _ }

// Imports all the members except Foo. To exclude a member rename it to _
import com.test.Fun.{ Foo => _ , _ }

In Scala, a getter and setter will be implicitly defined for all non-private vars in a object. The getter name is same as the variable name and _= is added for the setter name.

class Test {
    private var a = 0
    def age = a
    def age_=(n:Int) = {
            require(n>0)
            a = n
    }
}

Usage:

val t = new Test
t.age = 5
println(t.age)

If you try to assign a function to a new variable, the function will be invoked and the result will be assigned to the variable. This confusion occurs due to the optional braces for method invocation. We should use _ after the function name to assign it to another variable.

class Test {
    def fun = {
        // Some code
    }
    val funLike = fun _
}