Variance lets you control how type parameters behave with regards to subtyping. Scala supports variance annotations of type parameters of generic classes, to allow them to be covariant, contravariant, or invariant if no annotations are used. The use of variance in the type system allows us to make intuitive connections between complex types.
class Foo[+A] // A covariant class
class Bar[-A] // A contravariant class
class Baz[A] // An invariant class
Invariance
By default, type parameters in Scala are invariant: subtyping relationships between the type parameters aren’t reflected in the parameterized type. To explore why this works the way it does, we look at a simple parameterized type, the mutable box.
class Box[A](var content: A)
We’re going to be putting values of type Animal in it. This type is defined as follows:
abstract class Animal {
def name: String
}
case class Cat(name: String) extends Animal
case class Dog(name: String) extends Animal
abstract class Animal:
def name: String
case class Cat(name: String) extends Animal
case class Dog(name: String) extends Animal
We can say that Cat is a subtype of Animal, and that Dog is also a subtype of Animal. That means that the following is well-typed:
val myAnimal: Animal = Cat("Felix")
What about boxes? Is Box[Cat] a subtype of Box[Animal], like Cat is a subtype of Animal? At first sight, it looks like that may be plausible, but if we try to do that, the compiler will tell us we have an error:
val myCatBox: Box[Cat] = new Box[Cat](Cat("Felix"))
val myAnimalBox: Box[Animal] = myCatBox // this doesn't compile
val myAnimal: Animal = myAnimalBox.content
val myCatBox: Box[Cat] = Box[Cat](Cat("Felix"))
val myAnimalBox: Box[Animal] = myCatBox // this doesn't compile
val myAnimal: Animal = myAnimalBox.content
Why could this be a problem? We can get the cat from the box, and it’s still an Animal, isn’t it? Well, yes. But that’s not all we can do. We can also replace the cat in the box with a different animal
myAnimalBox.content = Dog("Fido")
There now is a Dog in the Animal box. That’s all fine, you can put Dogs in Animal boxes, because Dogs are Animals. But our Animal Box is a Cat Box! You can’t put a Dog in a Cat box. If we could, and then try to get the cat from our Cat Box, it would turn out to be a dog, breaking type soundness.
val myCat: Cat = myCatBox.content //myCat would be Fido the dog!
From this, we have to conclude that Box[Cat] and Box[Animal] can’t have a subtyping relationship, even though Cat and Animal do.
Covariance
The problem we ran in to above, is that because we could put a Dog in an Animal Box, a Cat Box can’t be an Animal Box.
But what if we couldn’t put a Dog in the box? Then, we could just get our Cat back out without a problem, and it would adhere to the subtyping relationship. It turns out that that’s possible to do.
class ImmutableBox[+A](val content: A)
val catbox: ImmutableBox[Cat] = new ImmutableBox[Cat](Cat("Felix"))
val animalBox: ImmutableBox[Animal] = catbox // now this compiles
class ImmutableBox[+A](val content: A)
val catbox: ImmutableBox[Cat] = ImmutableBox[Cat](Cat("Felix"))
val animalBox: ImmutableBox[Animal] = catbox // now this compiles
We say that ImmutableBox is covariant in A, and this is indicated by the + before the A.
More formally, that gives us the following relationship: given some class Cov[+T], then if A is a subtype of B, Cov[A] is a subtype of Cov[B]. This allows us to make very useful and intuitive subtyping relationships using generics.
In the following less contrived example, the method printAnimalNames will accept a list of animals as an argument and print their names each on a new line. If List[A] were not covariant, the last two method calls would not compile, which would severely limit the usefulness of the printAnimalNames method.
def printAnimalNames(animals: List[Animal]): Unit =
animals.foreach {
animal => println(animal.name)
}
val cats: List[Cat] = List(Cat("Whiskers"), Cat("Tom"))
val dogs: List[Dog] = List(Dog("Fido"), Dog("Rex"))
// prints: Whiskers, Tom
printAnimalNames(cats)
// prints: Fido, Rex
printAnimalNames(dogs)
Contravariance
We’ve seen we can accomplish covariance by making sure that we can’t put something in the covariant type, but only get something out. What if we had the opposite, something you can put something in, but can’t take out? This situation arises if we have something like a serializer, that takes values of type A, and converts them to a serialized format.
abstract class Serializer[-A] {
def serialize(a: A): String
}
val animalSerializer: Serializer[Animal] = new Serializer[Animal] {
def serialize(animal: Animal): String = s"""{ "name": "${animal.name}" }"""
}
val catSerializer: Serializer[Cat] = animalSerializer
catSerializer.serialize(Cat("Felix"))
abstract class Serializer[-A]:
def serialize(a: A): String
val animalSerializer: Serializer[Animal] = new Serializer[Animal]():
def serialize(animal: Animal): String = s"""{ "name": "${animal.name}" }"""
val catSerializer: Serializer[Cat] = animalSerializer
catSerializer.serialize(Cat("Felix"))
We say that Serializer is contravariant in A, and this is indicated by the - before the A. A more general serializer is a subtype of a more specific serializer.
More formally, that gives us the reverse relationship: given some class Contra[-T], then if A is a subtype of B, Contra[B] is a subtype of Contra[A].
Immutability and Variance
Immutability constitutes an important part of the design decision behind using variance. For example, Scala’s collections systematically distinguish between mutable and immutable collections. The main issue is that a covariant mutable collection can break type safety. This is why List is a covariant collection, while scala.collection.mutable.ListBuffer is an invariant collection. List is a collection in package scala.collection.immutable, therefore it is guaranteed to be immutable for everyone. Whereas, ListBuffer is mutable, that is, you can change, add, or remove elements of a ListBuffer.
To illustrate the problem of covariance and mutability, suppose that ListBuffer was covariant, then the following problematic example would compile (in reality it fails to compile):
import scala.collection.mutable.ListBuffer
val bufInt: ListBuffer[Int] = ListBuffer[Int](1,2,3)
val bufAny: ListBuffer[Any] = bufInt
bufAny(0) = "Hello"
val firstElem: Int = bufInt(0)
If the above code was possible then evaluating firstElem would fail with ClassCastException, because bufInt(0) now contains a String, not an Int.
The invariance of ListBuffer means that ListBuffer[Int] is not a subtype of ListBuffer[Any], despite the fact that Int is a subtype of Any, and so bufInt cannot be assigned as the value of bufAny.
Comparison With Other Languages
Variance is supported in different ways by some languages that are similar to Scala. For example, variance annotations in Scala closely resemble those in C#, where the annotations are added when a class abstraction is defined (declaration-site variance). In Java, however, variance annotations are given by clients when a class abstraction is used (use-site variance).
Scala’s tendency towards immutable types makes it that covariant and contravariant types are more common than in other languages, since a mutable generic type must be invariant.