A self-type for a trait A:
trait B
trait A { this: B => }
says that \"A cannot be mixed into a concrete cl
Section 2.3 "Selftype Annotations" of Martin Odersky's original Scala paper Scalable Component Abstractions actually explains the purpose of selftype beyond mixin composition very well: provide an alternative way of associating a class with an abstract type.
The example given in the paper was like the following, and it doesn't seem to have an elegant subclass correspondent:
abstract class Graph {
type Node <: BaseNode;
class BaseNode {
self: Node =>
def connectWith(n: Node): Edge =
new Edge(self, n);
}
class Edge(from: Node, to: Node) {
def source() = from;
def target() = to;
}
}
class LabeledGraph extends Graph {
class Node(label: String) extends BaseNode {
def getLabel: String = label;
def self: Node = this;
}
}