How do I get around type erasure on Scala? Or, why can't I get the type parameter of my collections?

This answer uses the Manifest-API, which is deprecated as of Scala 2.10. Please see answers below for more current solutions.

Scala was defined with Type Erasure because the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), unlike Java, did not get generics. This means that, at run time, only the class exists, not its type parameters. In the example, JVM knows it is handling a scala.collection.immutable.List, but not that this list is parameterized with Int.

Fortunately, there's a feature in Scala that lets you get around that. It’s the Manifest. A Manifest is class whose instances are objects representing types. Since these instances are objects, you can pass them around, store them, and generally call methods on them. With the support of implicit parameters, it becomes a very powerful tool. Take the following example, for instance:

object Registry {
  import scala.reflect.Manifest
  
  private var map= Map.empty[Any,(Manifest[_], Any)] 
  
  def register[T](name: Any, item: T)(implicit m: Manifest[T]) {
    map = map.updated(name, m -> item)
  }
  
  def get[T](key:Any)(implicit m : Manifest[T]): Option[T] = {
    map get key flatMap {
      case (om, s) => if (om <:< m) Some(s.asInstanceOf[T]) else None
    }     
  }
}

scala> Registry.register("a", List(1,2,3))

scala> Registry.get[List[Int]]("a")
res6: Option[List[Int]] = Some(List(1, 2, 3))

scala> Registry.get[List[String]]("a")
res7: Option[List[String]] = None

When storing an element, we store a "Manifest" of it too. A Manifest is a class whose instances represent Scala types. These objects have more information than JVM does, which enable us to test for the full, parameterized type.

Note, however, that a Manifest is still an evolving feature. As an example of its limitations, it presently doesn't know anything about variance, and assumes everything is co-variant. I expect it will get more stable and solid once the Scala reflection library, presently under development, gets finished.


You can do this using TypeTags (as Daniel already mentions, but I'll just spell it out explicitly):

import scala.reflect.runtime.universe._
def matchList[A: TypeTag](list: List[A]) = list match {
  case strlist: List[String @unchecked] if typeOf[A] =:= typeOf[String] => println("A list of strings!")
  case intlist: List[Int @unchecked] if typeOf[A] =:= typeOf[Int] => println("A list of ints!")
}

You can also do this using ClassTags (which saves you from having to depend on scala-reflect):

import scala.reflect.{ClassTag, classTag}
def matchList2[A : ClassTag](list: List[A]) = list match {
  case strlist: List[String @unchecked] if classTag[A] == classTag[String] => println("A List of strings!")
  case intlist: List[Int @unchecked] if classTag[A] == classTag[Int] => println("A list of ints!")
}

ClassTags can be used so long as you don't expect the type parameter A to itself be a generic type.

Unfortunately it's a little verbose and you need the @unchecked annotation to suppress a compiler warning. The TypeTag may be incorporated into the pattern match automatically by the compiler in the future: https://issues.scala-lang.org/browse/SI-6517


You can use the Typeable type class from shapeless to get the result you're after,

Sample REPL session,

scala> import shapeless.syntax.typeable._
import shapeless.syntax.typeable._

scala> val l1 : Any = List(1,2,3)
l1: Any = List(1, 2, 3)

scala> l1.cast[List[String]]
res0: Option[List[String]] = None

scala> l1.cast[List[Int]]
res1: Option[List[Int]] = Some(List(1, 2, 3))

The cast operation will be as precise wrt erasure as possible given the in-scope Typeable instances available.

Tags:

Scala

Type Erasure

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