What is Scala's yield?

Question

I understand Ruby and Python\'s yield. What does Scala\'s yield do?

Answer 1

Yes, as Earwicker said, it's pretty much the equivalent to LINQ's select and has very little to do with Ruby's and Python's yield. Basically, where in C# you would write

from ... select ??? 

in Scala you have instead

for ... yield ???

It's also important to understand that for-comprehensions don't just work with sequences, but with any type which defines certain methods, just like LINQ:

• If your type defines just map, it allows for-expressions consisting of a single generator.
• If it defines flatMap as well as map, it allows for-expressions consisting of several generators.
• If it defines foreach, it allows for-loops without yield (both with single and multiple generators).
• If it defines filter, it allows for-filter expressions starting with an if in the for expression.

Answer 2

yield is more flexible than map(), see example below

val aList = List( 1,2,3,4,5 )

val res3 = for ( al <- aList if al > 3 ) yield al + 1 
val res4 = aList.map( _+ 1 > 3 ) 

println( res3 )
println( res4 )

yield will print result like: List(5, 6), which is good

while map() will return result like: List(false, false, true, true, true), which probably is not what you intend.

Answer 3

val aList = List( 1,2,3,4,5 )

val res3 = for ( al <- aList if al > 3 ) yield al + 1
val res4 = aList.filter(_ > 3).map(_ + 1)

println( res3 )
println( res4 )

These two pieces of code are equivalent.

val res3 = for (al <- aList) yield al + 1 > 3
val res4 = aList.map( _+ 1 > 3 )

println( res3 ) 
println( res4 )

These two pieces of code are also equivalent.

Map is as flexible as yield and vice-versa.