How do I print a List of anything in Scala?

Question

At the moment I have a method that prints Ints

def printList(args: List[Int]): Unit = {
  args.foreach(println)
}

How do I modify this so it is flexible enough to print a list of anything?

Answer 1

You don't need a dedicated method, the required functionality is already right there in the collection classes:

println(myList mkString "\n")

mkString has two forms, so for a List("a", "b", "c"):

myList.mkString("[",",","]") //returns "[a,b,c]"
myList.mkString(" - ") // returns "a - b - c"
//or the same, using infix notation
myList mkString ","

My example just used \n as the separator and passed the resulting string to println

Answer 2

Since println works on anything:

def printList(args: List[_]): Unit = {
  args.foreach(println)
}

Or even better, so you aren't limited to Lists:

def printList(args: TraversableOnce[_]): Unit = {
  args.foreach(println)
}