Why doesn't Option have a fold method?

Question

I wonder why scala.Option doesn't have a method fold like this defined:

fold(ifSome: A => B , ifNone: => B)

equivalent to

map(ifSome).getOrElse(ifNone)

Is there no better than using map + getOrElse?

Answer 1

I personally find methods like cata that take two closures as arguments are often overdoing it. Do you really gain in readability over map + getOrElse? Think of a newcomer to your code: What will they make of

opt cata { x => x + 1, 0 }

Do you really think this is clearer than

opt map { x => x + 1 } getOrElse 0

In fact I would argue that neither is preferable over the good old

opt match {
  case Some(x) => x + 1
  case None => 0
}

As always, there's a limit where additional abstraction does not give you benefits and turns counter-productive.