Benefits of sealed traits in Scala (like enum in Java)

As a quick note about traits in Scala, this StackOverflow page makes a few good points about sealed traits:

• sealed traits can only be extended in the same file
• this lets the compiler easily know all possible subtypes
• example: the compiler can emit warnings if a match/case expression is not exhaustive
• use sealed traits when the number of possibly subtypes is finite and known in advance
• they can be a way of creating something like an enum in Java

For functional programming sealed traits also offer one really big advantage:

• they help you define algebraic data types, or ADTs

Sealed trait examples

Examples of things that can be sealed traits are days in the week, months in a year, and the suits in a deck of cards.

The first answer from that SO page shows a simple example of how to write a sealed trait:

sealed trait Answer
case object Yes extends Answer
case object No extends Answer

This article on noelwelsh.com about algebraic data types and sealed traits is also helpful.