Scala: Can a literal reference itself?

Question

I want to do something like this:

scala> \"Hello world\"(this.length -1)
res30: Char = d

This obviously doesn\'t work as I can\'t refere

Answer 1

You can't reference the literal itself, but you can create a block with a temporary variable local to that block.

scala> val lastChar = { val tmp = "Hello World"; tmp(tmp.length - 1) }
lastChar: Char = d

scala> tmp
:8: error: not found: value tmp