lazy function definitions in scala

Question

I\'ve been learning scala and I gotta say that it\'s a really cool language. I especially like its pattern matching capabilities and function literals but I come from a javascri

Answer 1

You can define a lazy val which is a function :

lazy val foo = {
  val d = new Date
  () => { d }
}

println(foo())

foo() will now return the same Date object each time, object which will be initialized the first time foo is called.

To explain the code a little, the first time foo() is called { val d = new Date; () => { d } } is executed, d is assigned to a new date value then it evaluate the last expression () => { d } and assign it to the foo value. Then foo is a function with no parameters which return d.