Is there a brief syntax for executing a block n times in Scala?

Question

I find myself writing code like this when I want to repeat some execution n times:

for (i <- 1 to n) { doSomething() }

I'm looking for a shorter syntax like this:

n.times(doSomething())

Does something like this exist in Scala already?

EDIT

I thought about using Range's foreach() method, but then the block needs to take a parameter which it never uses.

(1 to n).foreach(ignored => doSomething())

Answer 1

The Range class has a foreach method on it that I think is just what you need. For example, this:

 0.to(5).foreach(println(_))

produced

0
1
2
3
4
5

Answer 2

You could easily define one using Pimp My Library pattern.

scala> implicit def intWithTimes(n: Int) = new {        
     |   def times(f: => Unit) = 1 to n foreach {_ => f}
     | }
intWithTimes: (n: Int)java.lang.Object{def times(f: => Unit): Unit}

scala> 5 times {
     |   println("Hello World")
     | }
Hello World
Hello World
Hello World
Hello World
Hello World

Answer 3

I'm not aware of anything in the library. You can define a utility implicit conversion and class that you can import as needed.

class TimesRepeat(n:Int) {
  def timesRepeat(block: => Unit): Unit = (1 to n) foreach { i => block }
}
object TimesRepeat {
  implicit def toTimesRepeat(n:Int) = new TimesRepeat(n)
}

import TimesRepeat._

3.timesRepeat(println("foo"))

Rahul just posted a similar answer while I was writing this...

Answer 4

OOPS, Should we start a project like Apache Commons for Scala ?! Scala team shoud add these utilities in Scala kernal ! OMG,Scala dont repeat Java's pitfalls please!