Feature Request: Make Append operation return *StringBuilder to facilitate chaining

[varunu28]

Typical functionality of a builder function consists of chaining operation. The exisitng implementation of Append function can be modified to return *StringBuilder. This will facilitate chaining operation and end up resulting in cleaner code.

For example current sample code is as below:

sb := Text.StringBuilder{}
sb.Append("Hello")
sb.Append(" ")
sb.Append("World")
fmt.Println(sb.ToString())

With the updated feature, above code will look like:

sb := Text.StringBuilder{}
s := sb.Append("Hello").Append(" ").Append("World").ToString()
fmt.Println(s)

I will be happy to add a POC implementation for this feature and can extend the implementation to other Append functions in future.

Let me know what you think @linkdotnet

[linkdotnet]

Hey @varunu28 ,

good point - I pushed those changes as it was quite straightforward to do so.
Functions that return a potential error, will still not return the pointer to the stringbuilder.

[varunu28]

@linkdotnet Sounds good. Also another idea is to extend the current functionality to append types in addition to string like StringBuilder implementation in other languages do(https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/lang/StringBuilder.html#append-boolean-)

I will love to work on extending the append functionality as described above. Let me know if this sounds good to you?

[linkdotnet]

Sure - but please have a look at the latest release/commits as I already packed in some "fluent-pattern" in there.
Let me know if your idea diverges from this.

[varunu28]

I did went through the release v.0.7.0 and the only API change that introduces is the chaining operation as below
sb.Append("Hello").Append(" ").Append("World")

As part of #1 (comment), I wanted to introduce another idea of having non-string types being added to the stringbuilder. So the end result will look something as below:

sb.Append("hello").append(123).append(false).ToString() -> ABC123false

[linkdotnet]

Ahhh sorry yes I misunderstood that part.
And if you are willing the spend some time and some thoughts into it, you are welcome.
can’t wait to see what you came up with

[varunu28]

Thanks @linkdotnet I will share some initial findings as a POC with you and then jump into the final implementation. Also great job on creating this project. For someone like me who is coming from the Java world, libraries like these are life-saver to get onboarded to Golang.

[linkdotnet]

Thanks! I have a similar background coming from the .NET world. I felt there is something missing.

[linkdotnet]

Thanks again for your valuable time. I would close the issue or do you see open points from your side?

[varunu28]

Closing this issue as recent PRs have fulfilled the requirement discussed here.

[linkdotnet]

By the way I created directly a new release. If you have more ideas let me know!

[varunu28]

Thanks @linkdotnet . I added two new feature requests that I have commonly used for the StringBuilder implementation in Java. LMK what you think about it and I can pick one of them for implementation based upon your feedback

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