Difference of toString(...) and tryConvert(string,...)

[Ferenc Nagy]

I have defined a

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domain 
    species = string.

When I wanted to pass a variable from this domain to a procedure having string arguments

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Species="cat",
   V_String=toString(Species) 

resulted result surrounded by double quotes.

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V_String=""cat"".

The conversion

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Species="cat",
   V_String=tryConvert(string,Species) 

resulted unchanged string.

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V_String="cat".

The complier warned me sometimes about "superfluous conversion from species to string".

[Thomas Linder Puls]

toString will "write" any term to the string in the serialization format used by toTerm/tryToTerm which is the same format used by save/consult/writeQuoted/read.

tryConvert will convert a value which is convertible to a string to that string. For strings that would mean any subtype of string and symbol; the value will not change only the type will change because such values are already strings.

[Ferenc Nagy]

Thomas,
Thank you for the simple and logic explanation.