I'm about to make a few changes in some of my libraries and I'd like to ask the
language devs a key question about the $ stringify operator. I want to make
sure my libraries are following "nimish" convention as much as possible.
So, my question: what is the specific purpose of the operator in Nim and, more
specifically, who is the intended audience for the generated string?
In the world of JSON and XML, the word "stringify" has a very specific meaning:
converting the data structure to the string version of the spec. Essentially,
if you "stringify" an XML document, you can turn around and "parse" that string
and get the original data structure back (in full). Outside of that, I've only
seen the term used for human grammar, which simply means a "textual
representation" which can be a summary or a spelling or what-have-you.
If that is the intended meaning of $, then if you had a type called, for
example, `DoctoralThesis` and I followed general Nim convention, then:
let a = newDoctoralThesis()
#
# add details to a, then...
#
let stringifiedA = $a
let recoveredA = parseDoctoralThesis(stringifiedA) # `recoveredA` should
have the same content as `a`
Run
would be expected to work.
I'm not saying everyone's implementation of $ follows this model. I've seen
lots of examples that don't. :)
In fact, I've also seen it used in two other ways:
1\. Generating a useful representative string of the type with a short summary
of details. So, very useful to programmers and debugging.
> `DocThesis(Brown, 1995)`
2\. Generating an easily understood string equivalent. Very useful for creating
output to be seen by end users. But, not reliably parsable.
> `Brown, C. (1995). Understanding and care of fictional beagles. Washington
> archives. (1445202-23)`
but if it is meant to be parsable/reconstructable, the string could look
something like:
> `("Brown", "C.", 1995, "Understanding and care of fictional beagles",
> "Washington archives", "1445202-23")`
Anyway, sorry to ask such a pedantic question.
I'm happy to write a PR to the docs if the answer to this question is useful to
others.
