What’s the Scala way to implement a retry-able call like this one?

Recursion + first class functions by-name parameters == awesome.

def retry[T](n: Int)(fn: => T): T = {
  try {
    fn
  } catch {
    case e =>
      if (n > 1) retry(n - 1)(fn)
      else throw e
  }
}

Usage is like this:

retry(3) {
  // insert code that may fail here
}

Edit: slight variation inspired by @themel‘s answer. One fewer line of code 🙂

def retry[T](n: Int)(fn: => T): T = {
  try {
    fn
  } catch {
    case e if n > 1 =>
      retry(n - 1)(fn)
  }
}

Edit Again: The recursion bothered me in that it added several calls to the stack trace. For some reason, the compiler couldn’t optimize tail recursion in the catch handler. Tail recursion not in the catch handler, though, optimizes just fine 🙂

@annotation.tailrec
def retry[T](n: Int)(fn: => T): T = {
  val r = try { Some(fn) } catch { case e: Exception if n > 1 => None }
  r match {
    case Some(x) => x
    case None => retry(n - 1)(fn)
  }
}

Edit yet again: Apparently I’m going to make it a hobby to keep coming back and adding alternatives to this answer. Here’s a tail-recursive version that’s a bit more straightforward than using Option, but using return to short-circuit a function isn’t idiomatic Scala.

@annotation.tailrec
def retry[T](n: Int)(fn: => T): T = {
  try {
    return fn
  } catch {
    case e if n > 1 => // ignore
  }
  retry(n - 1)(fn)
}

Scala 2.10 update. As is my hobby, I revisit this answer occasionally. Scala 2.10 as introduced Try, which provides a clean way of implementing retry in a tail-recursive way.

// Returning T, throwing the exception on failure
@annotation.tailrec
def retry[T](n: Int)(fn: => T): T = {
  util.Try { fn } match {
    case util.Success(x) => x
    case _ if n > 1 => retry(n - 1)(fn)
    case util.Failure(e) => throw e
  }
}

// Returning a Try[T] wrapper
@annotation.tailrec
def retry[T](n: Int)(fn: => T): util.Try[T] = {
  util.Try { fn } match {
    case util.Failure(_) if n > 1 => retry(n - 1)(fn)
    case fn => fn
  }
}