Why does toString() exist? It seems useless.

[Frank Benoit]

Don schrieb:
> OTOH if it is intended for general I/O, I think it's a horribly broken 
> design.

What do you think about doing one of

1.)
change signature in object.Object to
   char[] toString( char[] fmt = null)
to give the object the possibility to use the format information.
Well, would break all code :/

2.)
Create a standard interface for doing that

interface Formatable {
   char[] toString( char[] fmt );
}

The object can implement this interface, the user can try to cast to 
this interface.

if( auto formatable = cast(Formatable)obj ){
    print( formatable.toString(fmt));
}
else if( obj !is null ){
    print( obj.toString());
}
else{
    print( "null" );
}