[Cdk-devel] RFC #9: toString() of core classes must be one liners

[E.L. W. <eg...@sc...>]

RFC CDK #9

Name: toString() of core classes must be one liners
Proposed: 2002-11-26

PROPOSAL

The .toString() methods of the core classes give information about the content 
of the class. My proposal is that the resulting String of these methods is a 
String without \n and \r chars (thus a one-liner) that gives an overview of 
the class. Being a one-liner, the output can be used in Log4J debugging 
output, without having the problem that lines in the output become 
multilined.

Note that I assume that the toString() method is not to be used for formating 
the atom's properties, but just for quick developers access to its contents.

REASON

At this moment the Log4J output is complicated by multilined debug lines like:

2002-11-26 15:11:58,883 [main] DEBUG org.openscience.cdk.applications.Viewer - 
0. Atom Hg
Hydrogen count: 0
Stereo Parity: 0
2D coordinates: (0.0021, -0.0041)
3D coordinates: (0.0021, -0.0041, 0.0020)
Partial charge: 0.0
Formal charge: 0

A simple "grep -v applications.Viewer" now no longer removes all output from 
the applications.Viewer class. If the atom.toString() output would be 
one-lined, filtering could be done much easier.