If in Scala IDE try the following:
val chars = Array[Char](256)
it is all fine. But if I do this:
val len = 256
val chars = Array[Char](len)
it says that it expects a Char instead of len? Why? I expect the behavior to be the same! Why does it think that I want to put that thing in the array instead of specifying it's size? As far as I know, there is no constructor for arrays that takes a single argument to place it inside the array.
val chars = Array[Char](256)
This works because 256 treated as a Char and it creates one-element array (with code 256)
val len = 256
val chars = Array[Char](len)
Here len is Int, so it fails
To create array of specified size you need something like this
val chars = Array.fill(256){0}
where {0} is a function to produce elements
If the contents of the Array don't matter you can also use new instead of fill:
val chars = new Array[Char](256)
