What does ampersand between functions mean in Scala

Question

I've encountered a strange piece of syntax in Scala, could someone explain it to me what does ampersand mean when aplied bettween functions that are passed as argument to other function?

partialUpdate {
    SetHtml(currentAmountId,
    Text(leadingBid.toString)) &
    SetHtml(nextAmountId,
    Text(minimumBid.toString)) &
    SetHtml(winningCustomerId, winningCustomer) &
    SetValueAndFocus(amountId,"")
}

Thank you for explaining this one to me.

Cliffcliffes

Is this related to Lift? If so, please make this clear in your question and maybe the title. This does not seem to be in the scala standard library. – Agnosia

Answer 1

& is a method on JsCmd in the Lift framework that concatenates two commands. It won't work on normal Scala strings.

Quaquaversal

Answer 2

In this case, it looks like it's concatenating the output of the SetHtml calls.

Does it look clearer like this?

partialUpdate {
    SetHtml(currentAmountId, Text(leadingBid.toString)) &
    SetHtml(nextAmountId, Text(minimumBid.toString)) &
    SetHtml(winningCustomerId, winningCustomer) &
    SetValueAndFocus(amountId,"")
}

Contrite

No. & is a method of whatever is returned by SetHtml. If it's a String, then it's a method added by an implicit. This is the problem with implicits and overator overloading. – Habitable

@Chocos: tastes vary of course, but in my opinion Lift does a pretty good job of providing clean syntax without the massively obscure behind-the-scenes machinery of something like Specs2, for example. You might need to spend a little more time up front with the documentation, but it's arguably worth it. – Quaquaversal