Scala Useful Code Snippets for Beginners(Part-3): Maps

Introduction

In Scala, Map is used to store (key,value) pairs. It has the following 3 flavours in Scala API

1. scala.collection.Map
2. scala.collection.mutable.Map
3. scala.collection.immutable.Map

Based on context, we can use either Mutable or Immutable Map.

Just like Strings uses '+' operator for String concatenation,  Map uses '++' operator to concatenate two Maps.

NOTE:- If we don't specify the type of Map, Scala Compiler creates Immutable Map automatically.

Let us explore Scala Map with some examples.

Examples:

To create empty Map
scala> val map1 = Map()
map1: scala.collection.immutable.Map[Nothing,Nothing] = Map()

To create empty Map by specifying key and value types

scala> val map1 = Map[String,String]()
map1: scala.collection.immutable.Map[String,String] = Map()

To create a Map with key and value pair values

scala> val map1 = Map(1 -> "one", 2 -> "two")

map1: scala.collection.immutable.Map[Int,String] = Map(1 -> one, 2 -> two)

Here Scala compiler will automatically infer the types of (key,value) pair.

To add a new (key,value) pair to existing Map instance

scala> val map1 = Map(1->"one",2->"two")
map1: scala.collection.immutable.Map[Int,String] = Map(1 -> one, 2 -> two)

scala> val map2 = map1 + (3->"three")
map2: scala.collection.immutable.Map[Int,String] = Map(1 -> one, 2 -> two, 3 -> three)

scala> map1
res0: scala.collection.immutable.Map[Int,String] = Map(1 -> one, 2 -> two)

scala> map2
res1: scala.collection.immutable.Map[Int,String] = Map(1 -> one, 2 -> two, 3 -> three)

No change to map1.

To concatenate two Map instances

scala> val map3 = Map(4->"four",5->"five")
map3: scala.collection.immutable.Map[Int,String] = Map(4 -> four, 5 -> five)

scala> val map4 = map2 ++ map3
map4: scala.collection.immutable.Map[Int,String] = Map(5 -> five, 1 -> one, 2 -> two, 3 -> three, 4 -> four)

scala> map4
res2: scala.collection.immutable.Map[Int,String] = Map(5 -> five, 1 -> one, 2 -> two, 3 -> three, 4 -> four)

That's it.

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