Pattern matching with regexes in Scala

Question

Why doesn't this work?

val isGovt = """Govt .*""".r
val Govt = "Govt 23 foobar"
Govt match {
    case isGovt(_) => println("match works")
    case _ => print("nope. doesn't work")
}

It prints 'nope. doesn't work'. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Change

val isGovt = """Govt .*""".r

to

val isGovt = """(Govt .*)""".r

When you use a regex as an extractor, the bound variables correspond to the regex's groups. Your regex had none.

You could also simply keep your regex as is and do:

case isGovt() =>

This is probably more like hat you had in mind.