Course of Raku / Advanced / Debugging / Turning values into text

The .Str method

The .Str method returns the plain string form of a value. It is called whenever a value is used in string context: by print and put, by the ~ concatenation operator, and by string interpolation inside double quotes.

say 42.Str;    # 42
my @a = 'alpha', 'beta', 'gamma';
say @a.Str;    # alpha beta gamma

Notice that the array came back without the brackets, with its elements simply joined by spaces — that is the visible difference from .gist, which keeps them. Compare the two side by side:

my @data = 1, 2, 3;
say @data.gist; # [1 2 3]
say @data.Str;  # 1 2 3

Because interpolation uses .Str, an array placed inside a string is shown the plain way:

my @data = 10, 20, 30;
say "data: @data[]"; # data: 10 20 30

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