Hi Doug:

>From dougo@ccs.neu.edu Thu Jun 12 18:29:55 1997
>From: Doug Orleans <dougo@ccs.neu.edu>
>To: Karl Lieberherr <lieber@ccs.neu.edu>
>Cc: dem@ccs.neu.edu
>Subject: Re: generic visitors
>
>Karl Lieberherr writes:
> > >Also, I'd prefer not to call them g_*;
> > >we should use Java functions where appropriate, e.g. toString() for the
> > 
> > I agree!
> > 
> > >PrintVisitor traversal
>
>Actually, I think I changed my mind about this one already-- not
>always do you want toString() to be the parsable-representation of the
>object.  For example, String.toString() is just the contents of the
>string, without quotation marks.  Maybe unparse() is a better name for
>this, since that's essentially its only contract-- to create a string
>that, when parsed, re-creates the object structure.  Then if the user
>wants toString for some classes to be the same as unparse(), he can
>define that manually (and this is easier in demjava because you can
>attach a single method to a list of classes at once).  Also, sometimes
>you want to print things to a stream as you traverse, rather than collect it
>all to a string and print it out at the end; one could imagine a
>before() method that, e.g., prompted the user for some input, so you'd
>want the output to be flushed before the prompt.
>
>--Doug
>

Thank you for this improvement. You make a convincing argument for the name
unparse.

-- Karl