Converting a Java collection into a Scala collection

Question

Related to Stack Overflow question Scala equivalent of new HashSet(Collection) , how do I convert a Java collection (java.util.List say) into a Scala c

Answer 1

For future reference: With Scala 2.8, it could be done like this:

import scala.collection.JavaConversions._
val list = new java.util.ArrayList[String]()
list.add("test")
val set = list.toSet

set is a scala.collection.immutable.Set[String] after this.

Also see Ben James' answer for a more explicit way (using JavaConverters), which seems to be recommended now.