Scala: Elegant conversion of a string into a boolean

How about this:

import scala.util.Try

Try(myString.toBoolean).getOrElse(false)

If the input string does not convert to a valid Boolean value false is returned as opposed to throwing an exception. This behavior more closely resembles the Java behavior of Boolean.valueOf(myString).

Note: Don't write new Boolean(myString) in Java - always use Boolean.valueOf(myString). Using the new variant unnecessarily creates a Boolean object; using the valueOf variant doesn't do this.

Ah, I am silly. The answer is myString.toBoolean.

Scala 2.13 introduced String::toBooleanOption, which combined to Option::getOrElse, provides a safe way to extract a Boolean as a String:

"true".toBooleanOption.getOrElse(false)  // true
"false".toBooleanOption.getOrElse(false) // false
"oups".toBooleanOption.getOrElse(false)  // false