XOM API for Processing XML with Java

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo AT metalab.unc.edu>]

At 11:26 PM -0500 9/19/02, Bradley S. Huffman wrote:

> Is there some reason people don't like toString() for this functionality.


Yes. If you invoke toXML on a Document or large Element, you're 
potentially getting a *lot* of text back in that string. That make 
sit inconvenient for the use-case of System.out.println(myObject) to 
see what the object is and what its properties are when debugging. 
Furthermore, you may have to do a potentially expensive tree-walk.

I'm not sure if Sun has ever officially stated this (and I know some 
of their own classes violate it) but I feel that toString() methods 
should be limited to one line of text that's fairly quick to 
generate, and that this line of text should include the class name.
--

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo AT metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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