How to create a range of characters as a Scala Array

I just noticed this quirk when trying to create an array of characters with the Scala Array.range method:

# works as expected
('a' to 'e').toArray              // Array[Char] = Array(a, b, c, d, e)

# surprise: Array.range always returns Array[Int]
val a = Array.range('a', 'e')     // Array[Int] = Array(97, 98, 99, 100)

I was surprised to see that the Scaladoc for the Array object states that the second example is expected behavior; Array.range always returns an Array[Int]. I suspect this has something to do with a Scala Array being backed by a Java array, but I didn’t dig into the source code to confirm this.

For much more information about arrays, see my Scala Array class examples tutorial.