Converting a Java collection into a Scala collection
For future reference: With Scala 2.8, it could be done like this: import scala.collection.JavaConversions._ val list = new java.util.ArrayList[String]() list.add(“test”) val set = list.toSet set is a scala.collection.immutable.Set[String] after this. Also see Ben James’ answer for a more explicit way (using JavaConverters), which seems to be recommended now.