Update on String Templates (JEP 459)

[Guy Steele]

> On Mar 13, 2024, at 5:04 PM, Guy Steele <guy.steele at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Mar 13, 2024, at 4:34 PM, Remi Forax <forax at univ-mlv.fr> wrote:
>> 
>> Given what Maurizio said and this, i think the only missing piece in the puzzle is what about existing methods taking a String as parameter.
>> 
>> We know that for SQL.process(), we do not want process() to take a String but only a StringTemplate.
>> But what about the existing methods that takes a String.
>> 
>> Given a method Logger.warning(String), should
>> LOG.warning($”CREATE TABLE foo;”);
>> LOG.warning($”INSERT INTO foo (name, title) VALUES (\{other name}, \{other job});”);
>> 
>> be legal ? Is there an auto-conversion (a kind of boxing conversion) from StringTemplate to String ?
> 
> In my proposal, the answer would be “no”. Instead you would have two choices:
> 
> (1) Instead of string template expressions as in the example just given, you could use string literals or string interpolation expressions (omit the “$” characters):
> 
> LOG.warning(”CREATE TABLE foo;”);
> LOG.warning(”INSERT INTO foo (name, title) VALUES (\{other name}, \{other job});”);
> 
> (2) If instead you have some other sort of expression (such as a variable) whose type is StringTempate, you can write
> 
> LOG.warning(String.of(myStringTemplate));
> 
> This makes quite explicit that a conversion is happening from StringTemplate to String.

That reminds me: I would recommend that the instance method `toString` for class StringTemplate _not_ be the same as `String.of(Template)`; rather, it should print in some form that shows the internal structure of the StringTemplate.

—Guy