Scala list concatenation, ::: vs ++

::: works only with lists, while ++ can be used with any traversable. In the current implementation (2.9.0), ++ falls back on ::: if the argument is also a List.

Legacy. List was originally defined to be functional-languages-looking:

1 :: 2 :: Nil // a list
list1 ::: list2  // concatenation of two lists

list match {
  case head :: tail => "non-empty"
  case Nil          => "empty"
}

Of course, Scala evolved other collections, in an ad-hoc manner. When 2.8 came out, the collections were redesigned for maximum code reuse and consistent API, so that you can use ++ to concatenate any two collections -- and even iterators. List, however, got to keep its original operators, aside from one or two which got deprecated.

Always use :::. There are two reasons: efficiency and type safety.

Efficiency

x ::: y ::: z is faster than x ++ y ++ z, because ::: is right associative. x ::: y ::: z is parsed as x ::: (y ::: z), which is algorithmically faster than (x ::: y) ::: z (the latter requires O(|x|) more steps).

Type safety

With ::: you can only concatenate two Lists. With ++ you can append any collection to List, which is terrible:

scala> List(1, 2, 3) ++ "ab"
res0: List[AnyVal] = List(1, 2, 3, a, b)

++ is also easy to mix up with +:

scala> List(1, 2, 3) + "ab"
res1: String = List(1, 2, 3)ab