Semantics of toString

[Michal Minich]

Hello Justin,

> 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
> 

My practice tells me to use toString only for debugging - to quickly get 
string representation of object in human readable format - nothing else ever. 
So it is good that toString is part of D object class.

It quite unsuitable e.g. for serializing object to xml/html or other formats. 
You may find yourself later finding out that your object should not only 
be toString-ed to xml, but now to json... Better to use specific method for 
specific purpose.

what matters me more of object methods, is opEquals being part of them. But 
that is different story.