[Feature Request] print arrays or dicts, that contain unprintable types and printable types

[Volker-Weissmann]

Hello,

it would make debugging a lot easier if the message(text) function would work recursively on arrays and dictionaries, similar like rust's #[derive(debug)].

[dcbaker]

What version are you using? I think that message() will work recursively with arrays in recent versions of meson. I doubt it handles dicts correctly still.

[Volker-Weissmann]

I'm using ea2f34e , but I just realized my question is badly worded:
Lists and Dict work fine if they only contain printable types. But if you have just one variable that is not printable, like that:

cppc = meson.get_compiler('cpp')
m_dep = cppc.find_library('m')
ar = [1,2,3, m_dep]

you can no longer print and see anything of ar. It would be nice if message(ar) would print something like

[1,2,3, --unprintable--]

or something like

[1,2,3, dependency-type of library 'm']

[xclaesse]

Many objects already implement __repr__ but we probably would have to come with more user friendly representations. I think it would make sense for InterpreterObject to have a default to_string() method that would return something like --internal-- and override that method everywhere we can make more useful representation.

This is something I needed a few times too, I usually add prints in meson code itself when I need to debug something, clearly not user friendly way.