Fixed broken link closes #771

Author: travissarles

tutorials/tour/_posts/2017-02-13-mixin-class-composition.md

@@ -1,55 +1,81 @@
 ---
 layout: tutorial
-title: Mixin Class Composition
+title: Class Composition with Mixins
 
 disqus: true
 
 tutorial: scala-tour
 categories: tour
 num: 6
-next-page: anonymous-function-syntax
+next-page: higher-order-functions
 previous-page: traits
+prerequisite-knowledge: inheritance, traits, abstract-classes, unified-types
 ---
+Mixins are traits which are used to compose a class.
+
+```tut
+abstract class A {
+  val message: String
+}
+class B extends A {
+  val message = "I'm an instance of class B"
+}
+trait C extends A {
+  def loudMessage = message.toUpperCase()
+}
+class D extends B with C
+
+val d = new D
+d.message  // I'm an instance of class B
+d.makeMessageLoud  // I'M AN INSTANCE OF CLASS B
+```
+Class `D` has a superclass `B` and a mixin `C`. Classes can only have one superclass but many mixins (using the keywords `extends` and `with` respectively). The mixins and the superclass may have the same supertype.
+
+Now let's look at a more interesting example starting with an abstract class:
 
-As opposed to languages that only support _single inheritance_, Scala has a more general notion of class reuse. Scala makes it possible to reuse the _new member definitions of a class_ (i.e. the delta in relationship to the superclass) in the definition of a new class. This is expressed as a _mixin-class composition_. Consider the following abstraction for iterators.
- 
 ```tut
 abstract class AbsIterator {
   type T
   def hasNext: Boolean
   def next: T
 }
 ```
- 
-Next, consider a mixin class which extends `AbsIterator` with a method `foreach` which applies a given function to every element returned by the iterator. To define a class that can be used as a mixin we use the keyword `trait`.
- 
-```tut
-trait RichIterator extends AbsIterator {
-  def foreach(f: T => Unit) { while (hasNext) f(next) }
-}
-```
- 
-Here is a concrete iterator class, which returns successive characters of a given string:
- 
+The class has an abstract type `T` and the standard iterator methods.
+
+Next, we'll implement a concrete class (all abstract members `T`, `hasNext`, and `next` have implementations):
+
 ```tut
 class StringIterator(s: String) extends AbsIterator {
   type T = Char
   private var i = 0
-  def hasNext = i < s.length()
-  def next = { val ch = s charAt i; i += 1; ch }
+  def hasNext = i < s.length
+  def next = {
+    val ch = s charAt i
+    i += 1
+    ch
+  }
 }
 ```
- 
-We would like to combine the functionality of `StringIterator` and `RichIterator` into a single class. With single inheritance and interfaces alone this is impossible, as both classes contain member implementations with code. Scala comes to help with its _mixin-class composition_. It allows the programmers to reuse the delta of a class definition, i.e., all new definitions that are not inherited. This mechanism makes it possible to combine `StringIterator` with `RichIterator`, as is done in the following test program which prints a column of all the characters of a given string.
- 
+`StringIterator` takes a `String` and can be used to iterate over the String (e.g. to see if a String contains a certain character).
+
+Now let's create a trait which also extends `AbsIterator`.
+
 ```tut
-object StringIteratorTest {
-  def main(args: Array[String]) {
-    class Iter extends StringIterator(args(0)) with RichIterator
-    val iter = new Iter
-    iter foreach println
-  }
+trait RichIterator extends AbsIterator {
+  def foreach(f: T => Unit): Unit = while (hasNext) f(next)
 }
 ```
- 
-The `Iter` class in function `main` is constructed from a mixin composition of the parents `StringIterator` and `RichIterator` with the keyword `with`. The first parent is called the _superclass_ of `Iter`, whereas the second (and every other, if present) parent is called a _mixin_.
+Because `RichIterator` is a trait, it doesn't need to implement the abstract members of AbsIterator.
+
+We would like to combine the functionality of `StringIterator` and `RichIterator` into a single class.
+
+```tut
+object StringIteratorTest extends App {
+  class Iter extends StringIterator(args(0)) with RichIterator
+  val iter = new Iter
+  iter foreach println
+}
+```
+The new class `RichStringIter` has `StringIterator` as a superclass and `RichIterator` as a mixin.
+
+With single inheritance we would not be able to achieve this level of flexibility.