What is the use cases of Ignored Variable syntax in Scala?

Question

According to this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/8001065/1586965 we can do this in Scala:

val _ = 5

Now I understand the point of ignor

Answer 1

I don't think that this is a feature at all. In any case, it is not an "ignored variable". By which I mean that if val _ = 5 really introduced an unnamed value, then you could declare as many as you want in the same single scope. Not so:

scala> object Test {
     |   val _ = 5
     |   val _ = 7
     | }
:9: error: _ is already defined as value _
         val _ = 7
         ^

From the error message it seems clear that what really happens is that the value is actually named _ (which I'd call a quirk of the compiler that should be fixed). We can verify this:

scala> object Test {
     |   val _ = 5
     |   def test() { println( `_` ) } // This compiles fine
     | }
defined object Test

scala> Test.test()
5

As for the possible use of preventing a value discarding warning (as shown in som-snytt's answer), I'much prefer to simply return an explicit Unit. This looks less convoluted and is even shorter:

def g(): Unit = { f(); () }

as opposed to:

def g(): Unit = { val _ = f() }