Best Scala imitation of Groovy's safe-dereference operator (?.)?

Question

I would like to know what the best Scala imitation of Groovy\'s safe-dereference operator (?.), or at least some close alternatives are?

I\'ve discussed it breifly o

Answer 1

Monadic bind (flatMap/map) with the scala.Option type. Support is also provided by for-comprehensions. Scalaz provides an applicative functor style if you prefer.

This is not equivalent, but a far better solution than Groovy's operator for many reasons.

Answer 2

Not mine but a coworker's

class NullCoalescer[T <: AnyRef](target: T) {
    def ?? (other: T) =
        if(target == null) other else target
}
object NullCoalescerConversions {
    implicit def toNullCoalescer[T <: AnyRef](target: T): NullCoalescer[T] = 
        new NullCoalescer(target)
}

println (System.getProperty("maybe") ?? "definitely")