Splitting string into groups

Seems that all other answers are very concentrated on collection operations. But pure string + regex solution is much simpler:

str split """(?<=(\w))(?!\1)""" toList

In this regex I use positive lookbehind and negative lookahead for the captured char

Make it one-liner:

scala>  val str = "aaaabbcddddeeeeefff"
str: java.lang.String = aaaabbcddddeeeeefff

scala> str.groupBy(identity).map(_._2)
res: scala.collection.immutable.Iterable[String] = List(eeeee, fff, aaaa, bb, c, dddd)

UPDATE:

As @Paul mentioned about the order here is updated version:

scala> str.groupBy(identity).toList.sortBy(_._1).map(_._2)
res: List[String] = List(aaaa, bb, c, dddd, eeeee, fff)

def group(s: String): List[String] = s match {
  case "" => Nil
  case s  => s.takeWhile(_==s.head) :: group(s.dropWhile(_==s.head))
}

---

Edit: Tail recursive version:

def group(s: String, result: List[String] = Nil): List[String] = s match {
  case "" => result reverse
  case s  => group(s.dropWhile(_==s.head), s.takeWhile(_==s.head) :: result)
}

can be used just like the other because the second parameter has a default value and thus doesnt have to be supplied.

You can split the string recursively with span:

def s(x : String) : List[String] = if(x.size == 0) Nil else {
    val (l,r) = x.span(_ == x(0))
    l :: s(r) 
}

Tail recursive:

@annotation.tailrec def s(x : String, y : List[String] = Nil) : List[String] = {
    if(x.size == 0) y.reverse 
    else {
        val (l,r) = x.span(_ == x(0))
        s(r, l :: y)
    }
}