How to split long lines of code? [closed]

Question

If I have a one liner method that looks like this:

str.toLowerCase.replaceAll("[^\\w']", " ").split(" ").filter(word => word.trim.length >= 1).groupBy(word => word).mapValues(_.size)

What is the best way to avoid long lines of code and split it into multiple lines? Here are the options that I see:

1. Assign part of the methods chain to a val and start from line 2 with val.(rest of method chain)
2. Move some parts to own methods with meaningful names (onlyChars, trimmedText, ...)
3. Just split the lines and make the second line nested in the first one

Answer 1

You can split the line as @maaartinus suggested. Long chains like this are not unusual in Scala.

Alternatively, you could assign parts of the expression to variables, as you yourself suggested, for example:

val words = str.toLowerCase.replaceAll("[^\\w']+", " ").trim().split(" ")
words.groupBy(identity).mapValues(_.length)

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Some of the items in your chain can be simpler and shorter too:

• Instead of: .groupBy(word => word)
  • You can do: .groupBy(identity)
• Instead of s.length >= 1 it's more idiomatic to write s.nonEmpty
• Instead of replacing [\\w'] by space, trimming each item and check if not empty, it's simpler to replace [\\w']* and trim before the split, so that there will be no empty elements and no single space

Lastly, it's not about shortening, but instead of .mapValues(_.size), it's recommended to use .mapValues(_.length) with strings.

Answer 2

While I really hate long split lines, this one

str.toLowerCase.replaceAll("[^\\w']", " ").split(" ").filter(word => word.trim.length >= 1).groupBy(word => word).mapValues(_.size)

is just fine when written as

str.toLowerCase
    .replaceAll("[^\\w']", " ")
    .split(" ")
    .filter(word => word.trim.length >= 1)
    .groupBy(word => word)
    .mapValues(_.size)

---

This is surely better than methods doing close to nothing or local variables storing meaningless results. I'd consider them only when it gets really long or when there's a part worth extracting.

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I hardly know Scala and there may be some automatic semicolon insertion rules prohibiting this. Then you could probably use the Javascript-like trick with dots placed on the previous line

str.toLowerCase.
    replaceAll("[^\\w']", " ").
    split(" ").
    ...