Struggle against habits formed by Java when migrating to Scala

Question

What are the most common mistakes that Java developers make when migrating to Scala?

By mistakes I mean writing a code that does not conform to Scala spirit, for example

Answer 1

One obvious one is to not take advantage of the nested scoping that scala allows, plus the delaying of side-effects (or realising that everything in scala is an expression):

public InputStream foo(int i) {
   final String s = String.valueOf(i);
   boolean b = s.length() > 3;
   File dir;
   if (b) {
       dir = new File("C:/tmp");
   } else {
       dir = new File("/tmp");
   }
   if (!dir.exists()) dir.mkdirs();
   return new FileInputStream(new File(dir, "hello.txt"));
}

Could be converted as:

def foo(i : Int) : InputStream = {
   val s = i.toString
   val b = s.length > 3
   val dir = 
     if (b) {
       new File("C:/tmp")
     } else {
       new File("/tmp")
     }
   if (!dir.exists) dir.mkdirs()
   new FileInputStream(new File(dir, "hello.txt"))
}

But this can be improved upon a lot. It could be:

def foo(i : Int) = {
   def dir = {
     def ensuring(d : File) = { if (!d.exists) require(d.mkdirs); d }
     def b = { 
       def s = i.toString
       s.length > 3
     }
     ensuring(new File(if (b) "C:/tmp" else "/tmp"));
   }
   new FileInputStream(dir, "hello.txt")
}

The latter example does not "export" any variable beyond the scope which it is needed. In fact, it does not declare any variables at all. This means it is easier to refactor later. Of course, this approach does lead to hugely bloated class files!