Question

In Scala, I’d like to do:

class Identifier(val str: String) {
    override def toString(): String = str
}

class Variable(t: Type, name: Identifier, mutable: Boolean) {
    override def toString(): String = name
}

But I can’t because Scala won’t implicitly convert name in Variable#toString()‘s definition to a String. Is there a way this can be achieved ?

To be clear: I don’t want to define an additional method like:

object Identifier {
    implicit def idToString(x: Identifier): String = x.str
}

I’d like the toString() method to be called to do the conversion.

Answer 1

Try putting an explicit toString() call after calling name in Variables toString method like so:

override def toString() = name.toString()

Here you will explicitly call the method converting Variable to a string, thus telling the compiler exactly what you want.

.. Unless you really require the method to be implicit…