Re: [Discussion] is_string(), string type andobjectsimplementing __toString()

Hi Andrea, On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 8:44 PM, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me> wrote: > Fleshgrinder wrote: >> >> On 3/8/2017 7:36 PM, Andrea Faulds wrote: >>> >>> Hi, >>> >>> Andrey Andreev wrote: >>>> >>>> The question is rather "is this value a string?", only with the added >>>> assumption that __toString() objects are treated as "string objects" >>>> and thus fulfill the condition (another reason why I went for an >>>> is_string() parameter). >>> >>> >>> This is a faulty assumption. The presence of __toString() doesn't mean >>> the object is a string, or intended to be used like one. >>> >> >> What is it then in your book? >> > > It means the object can be converted to a string. But such a conversion may > entail a loss of information and not be equivalent to the object itself. It > might be a “human-readable” form, for instance. > There will be loss of information most of the time, indeed. That's not the point; broadly speaking, you'd have to alias __toString() to serialize() in order to avoid that. If it has an explicitly declared string representation, I want to have the option to use that easily, without writing boilerplate code to filter-out every other type. Cheers, Andrey.