Figuring out type of overriden member variable in Scala

Question

I have a type hierarchy like this:

trait Description {



}



trait DescriptionProvider {

   val description: Description

}



object Sample extends DescriptionProvider {

  object description extends Description {

    val name = "foo"

  }

}

Now I am looking for a function

f

, which gives me the concrete value

a.description

for any sub type of

DescriptionProvider

, including it's type.

E.g.

f(Sample).name

should compile and evaluate to

foo

.

An obvious accessing method can't work of course



def obvious[T <: DescriptionProvider](x: T) = x.description

obvious(Sample).name // doesn't compile of course, as foo returns only Description.

Is there any Trick how to design such a function f without doing massive changes in the object hierarchy (which is already existent and huge)?

I already tried using a Macro, which somehow works, but IntelliJ doesn't like it (in above Example

.name

would appear in Red), which makes it pretty hard to use.

I am using Scala 2.10 and can't change right now.

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Answer 1

Annotate your return type with a path-dependent one instead of relying on inference:

def obvious[T <: DescriptionProvider](x: T): x.description.type = x.description

I made a Scastie snippet with 2.10.6 and it seems to be working. I cannot check if Intellij would not complain, however.

Figuring out type of overriden member variable in Scala

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