Semantics of toString

[Justin Whear]

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?
> 
> **beers,
> Justin
> 
> **caveat: free beer offer available in-store only
> 

Two things:
1) Primarily for debugging purposes. It's very convenient.
2) As a default behavior in a few cases. For instance, if a listbox widget hasn't been given a view that knows how to render objects of type Foo, it can default to rendering the results of toString.