Scala: convert string to Int or None

Question

I am trying to get a number out of an xml field

...
12
...

via

Some((recipe \\ \"Main\" \\         


        

Answer 1

Here's another way of doing this that doesn't require writing your own function and which can also be used to lift to Either.

scala> import util.control.Exception._
import util.control.Exception._

scala> allCatch.opt { "42".toInt }
res0: Option[Int] = Some(42)

scala> allCatch.opt { "answer".toInt }
res1: Option[Int] = None

scala> allCatch.either { "42".toInt }
res3: scala.util.Either[Throwable,Int] = Right(42)

(A nice blog post on the subject.)