Getting Value of Either

Nicolas Rinaudo’s answer regarding calling getOrElse on either the left or right projection is probably the closest to Option.getOrElse.

Alternatively, you can fold the either:

scala> val x: Either[String,Int] = Right(5)
x: Either[String,Int] = Right(5)

scala> val a: String = x.fold(l => "left", r => r.toString)
a: String = 5

As l is not used in the above fold, you could also write x.fold(_ => "left", r => r.toString)

Edit:
Actually, you can literally have Option.getOrElse by calling toOption on the left or right projection of the either, eg,

scala> val o: Option[Int] = x.right.toOption
o: Option[Int] = Some(5)

scala> val a: String = o.map(_.toString).getOrElse("left")
a: String = 5