Solve type erasure

A common pitfall with JVM languages is type erasure. Let’s see an example :

List(1).isInstanceOf[List[String]]

Hopefully, it’s not a problem with Scala. Prior to version 2.10, Scala uses Manifest

def foo[T](x: List[T])(implicit m: Manifest[T]) = {
  if (m <:< manifest[String])
    println("Hey, this list is full of strings")
  else
    println("Non-stringy list")
}

But Scala 2.10 comes with a new reflection API

import scala.reflect.runtime.universe._
def foo[T:TypeTag](x: List[T]) = {
  val t = typeOf[T]
  if (t <:< typeOf[String])
    println("Hey, this list is full of strings")
  else
    println("Non-stringy list")
}

On contrary to Manifest, TypeTag handles correctly path-dependent type, existential types, … So if you are using Scala 2.10 and Manifest, consider migrating.