On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:49:11 -0500, Justin Johansson <n...@spam.com> wrote:
Don Wrote:
Lutger wrote:
> Don wrote:
> ...
>> There is a definite use for such as thing. But the existing
toString()
>> is much, much worse than useless. People think you can do something
with
>> it, but you can't.
>> eg, people have asked for BigInt to support toString(). That is an
>> over-my-dead-body.
>
> Since you are in the know and probably the biggest toString() hater
around:
> are there plans (or rejections thereof) to change toString() before
D2 turns
> gold? Seems to me it could break quite some code.
I'm hoping someone will come up with a design.
Straw man:
void toString(void delegate(const(char)[]) sink, string fmt) {
// fmt holds the format string from writefln/formatln.
// call sink() to print partial results.
}
That's starting to look like a "serialize" method!
As it should. I should be able to print a 10000 element container without
having to load a string representation of 10000 elements in memory.
I'd also like to see the name toString changed to something more
appropriate, like output().
And although I think a direct translation is mostly possible, emulating
writefln string formatting from tango would be a burden. I don't know if
there's any way around it without coming up with some complicated
"formatting provider" interface/object implementation, and I don't think
it's worth it.
Unfortunately, I doubt Walter accepts this, it's been proposed in the past
without success.
-Steve
