Compact syntax for get head of list as Option

Question

Is there a compact way to get the head of a list as a Some when the list is non-empty, getting None otherwise?

This is what I am currently doing,

val ms = moves.filter { ...some predicate... }
if (ms.nonEmpty) Some(ms.head) else None

Answer 1

Try headOption. The API docs are your friend.

Note also that find does exactly a filter plus headOption: it takes one item if there and puts it in an option, and otherwise gives None.

Answer 2

The answer above is correct for this case, but where you just need to simplify the second line, I also recommend this handy utility mentioned here (adopted from Scalaz):

implicit class boolean2Option(val value: Boolean) extends AnyVal {
  def option[A](f: => A) = if (value) Some(f) else None
}

Allows this:

if (condition) Some(result) else None

to become this:

condition option result