<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <!-- for emacs: -*- coding: utf-8 -*- -->
<!-- Apache may like this line in the file .htaccess: AddCharset utf-8 .html -->
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0 plus SVG 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/2002/04/xhtml-math-svg/xhtml-math-svg-flat.dtd" >
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head><title>toString -- convert to a string</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../../../Macaulay2/Style/doc.css"/>
</head>
<body>
<table class="buttons">
<tr>
<td><div><a href="___Total__Pairs.html">next</a> | <a href="_to__R__R.html">previous</a> | <a href="___Total__Pairs.html">forward</a> | <a href="_to__R__R.html">backward</a> | up | <a href="index.html">top</a> | <a href="master.html">index</a> | <a href="toc.html">toc</a> | <a href="http://www.math.uiuc.edu/Macaulay2/">Macaulay2 web site</a></div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr/>
<div><h1>toString -- convert to a string</h1>
<div class="single"><h2>Synopsis</h2>
<ul><li><div class="list"><dl class="element"><dt class="heading">Usage: </dt><dd class="value"><div><tt>toString x</tt></div>
</dd></dl>
</div>
</li>
<li><div class="single">Inputs:<ul><li><span><tt>x</tt>, any Macaulay2 object</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
<li><div class="single">Outputs:<ul><li><span><span>a <a href="___String.html">string</a></span>, a string representation of <tt>x</tt></span></li>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="single"><h2>Description</h2>
<div>Sometimes the string representation is just the name. See also <a href="_to__External__String.html" title="convert to a readable string">toExternalString</a> which will try to convert <tt>x</tt> to a string that can be read back into the program later.<table class="examples"><tr><td><pre>i1 : toString {1,4,a,f,212312,2.123243242}
o1 = {1, 4, a, f, 212312, 2.12324}</pre>
</td></tr>
</table>
If a ring has a global name, then toString returns this name.<table class="examples"><tr><td><pre>i2 : R = QQ[x_1..x_5];</pre>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><pre>i3 : toString R
o3 = R</pre>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><pre>i4 : toExternalString R
o4 = QQ[x_1, x_2, x_3, x_4, x_5, Degrees => {5:1}, Heft => {1}, MonomialOrder
=> VerticalList{MonomialSize => 32, GRevLex => {5:1}, Position => Up},
DegreeRank => 1]</pre>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><pre>i5 : toString(QQ[a])
o5 = QQ[a]</pre>
</td></tr>
</table>
Matrices and ring elements are linearized<table class="examples"><tr><td><pre>i6 : toString (x_1^3-3/4*x_5*x_3)
o6 = x_1^3-(3/4)*x_3*x_5</pre>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><pre>i7 : toString vars R
o7 = matrix {{x_1, x_2, x_3, x_4, x_5}}</pre>
</td></tr>
<tr><td><pre>i8 : toExternalString vars R
o8 = map(R^1,R^{{-1},{-1},{-1},{-1},{-1}},{{x_1, x_2, x_3, x_4, x_5}})</pre>
</td></tr>
</table>
</div>
</div>
<div class="single"><h2>See also</h2>
<ul><li><span><a href="_to__External__String.html" title="convert to a readable string">toExternalString</a> -- convert to a readable string</span></li>
<li><span><a href="_value.html" title="evaluate">value</a> -- evaluate</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
