List head and tail

Here is the simplest List method that gets the first element, that is, head of the list:

scala> def head[A](list: List[A]): A = list match { 
     |     case Nil => sys.error("tail of empty list") 
     |     case ::(x, _) => x 
     |   } 
head: [A](list: ch02.mylist.List[A])A 

We perform a pattern match on the list. The first clause case Nil => sys.error("tail of empty list") matches when the list is empty. An empty list will not have a first element so we raise an exception:

case ::(x, _) => x 

This clause matches when there are one or more elements in the list.

The following diagram shows how the pattern match works:

We usually write the second clause as follows:

case x :: _ => x 

This reads better. The expression  ::(x, _) can always be written in infix notation as x :: _. See http://danielwestheide.com/blog/2012/11/21/the-neophytes-guide-to-scala-part-1-extractors.html for more information. Here is the revised head...