I'd like to define some implicit methods for arrays of doubles to make my code cleaner. Ideally, they would look like this:
type Vec = Array[Double]
implicit def enrichVec(v: Vec) = new {
def /(x: Double) = v map (_/x)
def *(u: Vec) = (v zip u) map {case (x,y) => x*y} sum
def normalize = v / math.sqrt(v * v)
}
However the normalize function doesn't work as written because Scala won't apply implicit methods recursively. Specifically, I get an error Note: implicit method enrichVec is not applicable here because it comes after the application point and it lacks an explicit result type. I could avoid this by explicitly writing out the code for normalize, but that would be ugly. Is there a nicer solution?
The anonymous class inhibits the recursive function definitions. You need to define the "RichVec" as a class and then separately define the implicit conversion.
type Vec = Array[Double]
implicit def enrichVec(v: Vec) = RichVec( v )
case class RichVec( v: Vec ) {
def /(x: Double) = v map (_/x)
def *(u: Vec) = (v zip u) map {case (x,y) => x*y} sum
def normalize = v / math.sqrt( v * v )
}