Is there a generic way to memoize in Scala?

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I found a better way to memoize using Scala:

def memoize[I, O](f: I => O): I => O = new mutable.HashMap[I, O]() {
  override def apply(key: I) = getOrElseUpdate(key, f(key))
}

Now you can write fibonacci as follows:

lazy val fib: Int => BigInt = memoize {
  case 0 => 0
  case 1 => 1
  case n => fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)
}

Here’s one with multiple arguments (the choose function):

lazy val c: ((Int, Int)) => BigInt = memoize {
  case (_, 0) => 1
  case (n, r) if r > n/2 => c(n, n - r)
  case (n, r) => c(n - 1, r - 1) + c(n - 1, r)
}

And here’s the subset sum problem:

// is there a subset of s which has sum = t
def isSubsetSumAchievable(s: Vector[Int], t: Int) = {
  // f is (i, j) => Boolean i.e. can the first i elements of s add up to j
  lazy val f: ((Int, Int)) => Boolean = memoize {
    case (_, 0) => true        // 0 can always be achieved using empty list
    case (0, _) => false       // we can never achieve non-zero if we have empty list
    case (i, j) => 
      val k = i - 1            // try the kth element
      f(k, j - s(k)) || f(k, j)
  }
  f(s.length, t)
}

EDIT: As discussed below, here is a thread-safe version

def memoize[I, O](f: I => O): I => O = new mutable.HashMap[I, O]() {self =>
  override def apply(key: I) = self.synchronized(getOrElseUpdate(key, f(key)))
}

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