Scala's .type and Java's .class literal

Question

I wonder from a language design perspective why Scala has removed Java\'s class literal (e. g. String.class) and replaced it with classOf[String], but

Answer 1

Actually, it is quite consistent. Singleton.type is a dependent type of Singleton, while classOf[Class] is a type parameter to a method.

Consider this:

class A {
    class B
}

val a: A = new A
val b: a.B = new a.B

The point here is that . is used to indicate something that is a member of a value. It may be a val, a var, a def or an object and it may also be a type, a class or a trait.

Since a singleton object is a value, then Singleton.type is perfectly valid.

On the other hand, a class is not an object, so Class.class doesn't make sense. Class doesn't exist (as a value), so it is not possible to get a member of it. On the other hand, it's definition as def classOf[T]: Class[T] is plain Scala code (even if the actual implementation is compiler magic).