In the Scala reflection guide is written the following:
As with Manifests, one can in effect request that the compiler generate a TypeTag. This is done by simply specifying an implicit evidence parameter of type TypeTag[T]. If the compiler fails to find a matching implicit value during implicit search, it will automatically generate a TypeTag[T].
This StackOverflow answer beautifully explains the concept of "implicit evidence". However, it is still not completely clear to me what it means that the compiler will generate a TypeTag[T].
Does this mean that this is a special case of "implicit evidence" search? I.e. the class TypeTag[T] is handled in a special way when the compiler does implicit search ? I tried to look for implicit parameter values in the Scala reflection APIs but I did not find any which provides a TypeTag[T], so I assume the TypeTag[T] implicit parameter is coming from inside the compiler (as the documentation says). So the classname TypeTag[T] is hardcoded into the compiler's source. Is this assumption correct ?
Is the automatic generation of implicit values documented somewhere? In other words, is there a documentation somewhere which lists all the automatically generated implicit evidences ? I did not find TypeTag[T] in the Scala language specification (version 2.9). The closest concept there to TypeTag[T] is Manifest which are automatically generated implicit parameters. Are Manifests the only automatically generated implicit value parameters in Scala 2.9 ?
