this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2024
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Well, that's just going to be one of those "it is what it is" things in an OO language if your base class has a
toString()-equivalent. Sure, it's probably useless for a string, but if everything's an object and inherits from some top-levelObjectclass with atoString()method, then you're going to get atoString()method in strings too. You're going to get atoString()in everything; in JS even functions have atoString()(the output of which depends on the implementation):In a dynamically typed language, if you know that everything can be turned into a string with
toString()(or the like), then you can just call that method on any value you have and not have to worry about whether it'll hurl at runtime because eg.Strings don't have atoStringbecause it'd technically be useless.Okay, fair enough. Guess I never found about it because I never had to do it... JS also allows for
"test string".toString()directly, not sure how it goes in other languages.[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]
It's also incredibly useful as a failsafe in a helper method where you need the argument to be a string but someone might pass in something that is sort of a string. Lets you be a little more flexible in how your method gets called