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.
