== Quote from Don ([email protected])'s article > 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? > It's a hack from the early days of D. Should be unavailable unless the > -debug flag is set, to discourage people from using it. I hate it.
Why? You've said this several times w/o giving your reason. IMHO toString() is a great way to get a default string representation of something. If you care about the formatting details, then you use a non-special method. How else would you recommend giving objects a sane default string representation?
