Understanding Mixed Context Bounds of Seq[AnyVal] and Seq[String] - scala

Question

Suppose I have some function that should take a sequence of Ints or a sequence of Strings.
My attempt:
object Example extends App {
import scala.util.Random
val rand: Random.type = scala.util.Random
// raw data
val x = Seq(1, 2, 3, 4, 5).map(e => e + rand.nextDouble())
val y = Seq("chc", "asas")
def f1[T <: AnyVal](seq: Seq[T]) = {
println(seq(0))
}
// this works fine as expected
f1(x)
// how can i combine
f1(y)
}
How can I add this to also work with strings?
If I change the method signature to:
def f1[T <: AnyVal:String](seq: Seq[T])
But this won't work.
Is there a way to impose my required constraint on the types elegantly?

Answer 1

Note the difference between an upper bound
A <: C
and a context bound
A : C
so type parameter clause [T <: AnyVal : String] does not make much sense. Also types such as String are rarely (or never) used as context bounds.
Here is a typeclass approach
trait EitherStringOrAnyVal[T]
object EitherStringOrAnyVal {
implicit val str: EitherStringOrAnyVal[String] = new EitherStringOrAnyVal[String] {}
implicit def aval[T <: AnyVal]: EitherStringOrAnyVal[T] = new EitherStringOrAnyVal[T] {}
}
def f1[T: EitherStringOrAnyVal](seq: Seq[T]): Unit = {
println(seq(0))
}
f1(Seq(1)) // ok
f1(Seq("a")) // ok
f1(Seq(Seq(1))) // nok
or generelized type constraints approach
object Foo {
private def impl[T](seq: Seq[T]): Unit = {
println(seq(0))
}
def f1[T](seq: Seq[T])(implicit ev: T =:= String): Unit = impl(seq)
def f1[T <: AnyVal](seq: Seq[T]): Unit = impl(seq)
}
import Foo._
f1(Seq(1)) // ok
f1(Seq("a")) // ok
f1(Seq(Seq(1))) // nok

Answer 2

I feel like you should write a separate function for both, but there are other ways to do it:
In Dotty, you can just use union types, which is what I'd recommend here:
Edit: As per Alexey Romanov’s suggestion, replaced Seq[AnyVal | String] with Seq[AnyVal | String], which was wrong,
def foo(seq: Seq[AnyVal] | Seq[String]): Unit = {
println(seq)
}
Scastie
If you're not using Dotty, you can still do this in Scala 2 with a couple reusable implicit defs
class Or[A, B]
implicit def orA[A, B](implicit ev: A): Or[A, B] = new Or
implicit def orB[A, B](implicit ev: B): Or[A, B] = new Or
def foo[T](seq: Seq[T])(implicit ev: Or[T <:< AnyVal, T =:= String]): Unit =
println(seq)
foo(Seq("baz", "waldo"))
foo(Seq(23, 34))
foo(Seq(List(), List())) //This last one fails
Scastie
You can also do it with a typeclass, as Luis Miguel Mejía Suárez suggested, but I wouldn't recommend it for such a trivial task since you still have to define 2 functions for each type, along with a trait, 2 implicit objects, and one function that can use instances of that trait. You probably don't want this pattern to handle just 2 different types.
sealed trait DoSomethingToIntOrString[T] {
def doSomething(t: Seq[T]): Unit
}
implicit object DoSomethingToAnyVal extends DoSomethingToAnyValOrString[AnyVal] {
def doSomething(is: Seq[AnyVal]): Unit = println(is)
}
implicit object DoSomethingToString extends DoSomethingToIntOrString[String] {
def doSomething(ss: Seq[String]): Unit = println(ss)
}
def foo[T](t: Seq[T])(implicit dsis: DoSomethingToIntOrString[T]): Unit = {
dsis.doSomething(t)
}
foo(Seq("foo", "bar"))
foo(Seq(1, 2))
In Scastie

Answer 3

def f1( seq: Seq[Any] ): Unit =
println( seq( 0 ) )
This works, because the least common supertype of Int and String (the 'lowest' type that is a supertype of both) would be Any, since Int is a subtype of AnyVal (i.e. 'the primitives) and String is a subtype of AnyRef (i.e. `the heap objects). f1 does not depends in any way on the contents of the list and is not polymorphic in its return type (Unit), so we don't need a type parameter at all.