Extending functions

Nothing prevents a developer from extending a FunctionN trait the same way it is done with PartialFunction, though it seldom makes sense because of the limitations imposed by the referential transparency constraint. This means that such an implementation of the function should not have a shared state, nor should it mutate state. 

It might be tempting, for example, to implement a loaner pattern as a function, so that a used resource would be automatically closed after function application, but it won't be referentially transparent and thus won't satisfy the requirements for a function.

Here is how the implementation could look:

class Loan[-T <: AutoCloseable, +R](app: T => R) extends (T => R) {
  override def apply(t: T): R = try app(t) finally t.close()
}

And this is what happens if we call it:

scala> new Loan((_: java.io.BufferedReader).readLine())(Console.in)
res13: String = Hello

scala> [error] (run-main-0) java.io.IOException: Stream Closed
[error] java.io.IOException: Stream Closed
[error] at java.io.FileInputStream.read0(Native Method)
[error] at java.io.FileInputStream.read(FileInputStream.java:207)
[error] at jline.internal.NonBlockingInputStream.read(NonBlockingInputStream.java:245)
...

Unfortunately, it is not even possible to test whether the second call would produce the same result (obviously it will not) because we broke the REPL by closing the Console.in.