C# implicit string conversion

Jonas Elfström — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:32:00 +0100

I know how it works and I think I can see why but I'm still not very fond of how eager C# is to perform implicit string conversion.

Contrived example:

12	string s = -42 + '+' + "+" + -0.1 / -0.1 + "=" + (7 ^ 5) + " is " + true + " and not " + AddressFamily.Unknown;

s will be set to "1+1=2 is True and not Unknown"

The answer is in white text above, select the text to see it.

A more real problem is something like this

string str = 1 + 2 + "!=" + 1 + 2;

str will be set to "3!=12".

Edit 2010-02-08
This wouldn't be much of a problem if all objects in .NET always returned a decent string representation of their current state/value with ToString() but that's not the case. Instead "The default implementation returns the fully qualified name of the type of the Object.".
I don't like the inconsistency. It's way too late now but I think it would have been much better if only objects that really produces a human readable output of the data in the object should implement ToString(). If you want the name of the type of the Object there should be another way.

Alice, Bob, and Mallory: C# implicit string conversion

C# implicit string conversion