This package, developed by Phasmid Software and Dataflowage Inc. provides a smorgasbord of functional and general utility libraries:

• A set of functional programming methods to complement what's in the standard Scala library including: ** map2, map3, etc. ** lift2, lift3, etc.
• (V1.0.1) a set of enhanced classes for composing functions together in such a way that they can be rendered;
• a set of generic Tree-traversal classes, including an MPTT (modified pre-order tree traversal) class;
• a rules parser together with a set of Predicates;
• a "Value" type which can be converted to several type classes:
  • Valuable (similar to Numeric);
  • Scalar;
  • Orderable ;
  • Incrementable;
• a Rational type;
• a set of self-fulfilling Cache classes;
• a set of parsers which will take a CSV file and yield a Stream of tuples or maps;
• a three-valued-logic module (Kleenean);
• a generic utility for implementing tail-recursive methods (Recursion);
• a utility to deal with command-line arguments (Args);
• a smart logger (SmartLogger);
• a simple "spy" utility for debugging via println statements (Spy);
• a Renderable class which allows a prettier and better structured textual representation of objects (than toString);
• various other utilities, including a Version type.

LaScala (latest version of 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT and all later versions) is cross-built for 2.11 and 2.10. I have not built LaScala with 2.12 at the present time.

• Various changes which need to be documented here.

• RenderableFunction, Closure, etc.
  • forced Seq type to be List for parameters of any serializable classes

• RenderableFunction, Closure, etc.
  • forced Seq type to be List for parameters of any serializable classes

• Tree:
  • refactored traits/classes for cleaner code;
  • added GeneralKVTreeWithScaffolding which uses a hashmap to find existing nodes during the building of a tree;
• FP:
  • added nextOption
  • added foldLeftShort

• Tree: minor change in render method

• Tree: better logic in addNode; refactored by separating out StructuralNode and StructuralTree types

• improvements to Version: now we use sbt-release and sbt-buildinfo

• FP: added map2g and flatMap2g; MPTT: added containsConditional

• a collaborative pair of classes: RenderableFunction and Closure which are designed to all for the development, debugging and deployment of AST-type parsing, for example the parsing of case clauses within SQL;
• updates/fixes to the Renderable trait and classes which support more general Renderables, such as Traversable, Option, Try, Either -- these are available via implicits;

Please contact us at Dataflowage if you are interested in receiving or providing consulting work in Spark, or any Big Data-related work. Also, if you are interested in contributing to LaScala.

The functional programming definitions arose from teaching the class "Big Data Systems Engineering using Scala" at Northeastern University College of Engineering Graduate School.

They (the definitions) don't claim to be anything very special. No doubt it would be better to use Scalaz or Shapeless but if you only want a few of the more basic definitions for things like map2, lift, sequence, etc. then this should do the job.

The rules parser, begun by Phasmid, has been further developed by Dataflowage. There is no "engine" aspect to this rules parser: neither forward nor backward chaining.

The name, while obviously embedding the name of its implementation language, is also in honor of the world's greatest opera house, La Scala di Milano. La Scala was the venue for the premieres of many of the greatest operas (in no particular order):

• Madama Butterfly
• La gazza ladra
• Nabucco
• Falstaff
• Andrea Chenier
• Norma
• Turandot
• Otello