Samuel, One thing I don't recall seeing in this thread is a discussion of the semantics of the methods names.
I find it helpful to consider #asWhatever to be a conversion method, used to convert one object to another essentially compatible class. e.g. #asFloat sent to an integer would be expected to yield a floating point number with the same value, but #asInteger sent to a floating point number would lose precision but might still be sensible for some purposes. [more on this below] But, #printString and its ilk (#displayString, #storeString, others) are not intended to be conversion methods. They are to provide an external representation of a format suitable for the intended audience. Typically, (and I say that guardedly), #printString's intended audience is the programmers working on the system and #displayString is intended for the system's users. In simple cases, #printString is reversible and can be parsed to recover the value of the original object. In general, it doesn't include enough information to do so. The same is true of #displayString. If we consider a slightly more complex example than a number, consider a User Profile. Its #printString might be 'UserProfile(John Doe)'. Its #displayString might be 'John Doe'. Neither of those provide all the details of the object, although they could be parsed and so used to look up an existing object. ---------- Continuing from [more on this below] above... I find #asString is one of the most problematic methods that I have ever seen. It is deceptive, an "attractive nuisance", as one colleague liked to say. Clarity comes from being explicit in one's programming. Say what you mean and mean what you say. If you are trying to convert from one object form to another, use a conversion method whose name is precise. If you are trying to provide information for a programmer about an object, #printString is the choice.(e.g. in a stack dump). As a general rule, #asWhatever methods that are generally applicable to the set of possible values. e.g. number conversion methods are a good example, even though there are exceptions (loss of precision, NaN, and Inf are some). I have seen a lot of #asWhatever methods added to the String hierarchy, but almost all of them are dubious, in my opinion of course. Most strings are not numbers, for example. String>>#asNumber is one of the worst things I have ever seen, both from a consistency perspective and an implementation perspective. 'abc123def456' asNumber has more variant results than I can enumerate. On Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 9:28 AM Samuel Teixeira Santos <arcano...@gmail.com> wrote: > Very clear to me now. > > Thank you and to others too by your previous answers >
