Avoiding implicit def ambiguity in Scala

Question

I am trying to create an implicit conversion from any type (say, Int) to a String...

An implicit conversion to String means RichString methods (like reverse) are not

Answer 1

The accepted solution (posted by Mitch Blevins) will never work: downcasting Int to String using asInstanceOf will always fail.

One solution to your problem is to add a conversion from any String-convertible type to RichString (or rather, to StringOps as it is now named):

implicit def stringLikeToRichString[T](x: T)(implicit conv: T => String) = new collection.immutable.StringOps(conv(x))

Then define your conversion(s) to string as before:

scala> implicit def intToString(i: Int) = String.valueOf(i)
warning: there was one feature warning; re-run with -feature for details
intToString: (i: Int)String

scala> 100.toCharArray
res0: Array[Char] = Array(1, 0, 0)

scala> 100.reverse
res1: String = 001

scala> 100.length
res2: Int = 3