Potential abuse of .stringof

[Mike via Digitalmars-d]

I am a little concerned about the discussion here 
(https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3394#discussion_r31953154) 
pertaining to the usage (or abuse) of .stringof.

[1] 
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/phobos/pull/3394#discussion_r31953154


JC: I've been told that stringof shouldn't be used for anything 
other than debugging. Is there something else that can be used? 
There's no guarantee that the result is stable?

AA: there was no other way I could do it

ML: A lot of the time there really is no other way. A large 
amount of code in this vein that I've written invariably ends up 
needing stringof as well. Maybe we should provide stronger 
guarantees about what stringof produces.

AA: Well it'll break the unittests that's for sure :). The 
problem here is with the function parameter lists. There is no 
way to express storage classes such as ref, out, lazy as parts of 
types.

I also think .stringof for types should offer better guarantees. 
The simplest one is, for non-Voldemort types, pasting the string 
into source code should be parsable as a type. Today that's not 
always the case.


I smell an action item here.  What can be done to make this less 
of "There's no other way to do it" and more "That's how it should 
be done"?

Mike