digitalmars.D - Re: Semantics of toString
- Justin Whear <justin economicmodeling.com> Nov 05 2009
Justin Johansson Wrote:I assert that the semantics of "toString" or similarly named/purposed methods/functions in many PL's (including and not limited to D) is ill-defined. To put this statement into perspective, I would be most appreciative of D NG readers responding with their own idea(s) of what the semantics of "toString" are (or should be) in a language agnostic ideology. If there are more than, say, two or three different views on the said semantics then my "ill-definition" assertion is surely correct. If there are no replies on this matter, then guess I'm left concludeless. Just thinking in the language round-up that this is (just another) one of the things we should address as a community. So what does "toString" mean to you? **beers, Justin **caveat: free beer offer available in-store only
Two things: 1) Primarily for debugging purposes. It's very convenient. 2) As a default behavior in a few cases. For instance, if a listbox widget hasn't been given a view that knows how to render objects of type Foo, it can default to rendering the results of toString.
Nov 05 2009