Stringsonly

Stringsonly is a programming concept or convention that refers to the exclusive use of string data types to represent all information within a program or a specific data structure. This approach can be found in various contexts, often as a design choice or a limitation of certain systems.

In systems that enforce stringsonly, numerical values, boolean flags, dates, and even complex data structures are all converted and stored as strings. For example, the number 123 would be represented as the string "123", and the boolean true would be the string "true". Dates might be stored in formats like "YYYY-MM-DD" as strings.

The primary advantage of a stringsonly approach can be simplicity in certain data interchange formats or legacy systems where type safety is not a primary concern. It can also make data easier to read and debug in plain text representations. However, this approach comes with significant drawbacks. Performance can be negatively impacted as strings need to be parsed and converted to their intended types for any arithmetic or logical operations. Error handling becomes more complex, as invalid string representations can lead to runtime errors. Furthermore, it diminishes the benefits of strong typing, such as compile-time checks and improved code maintainability.

While not a common practice in modern, robust software development due to its inefficiencies and potential for errors, understanding the stringsonly concept is useful for analyzing older systems or specific data serialization formats where such conventions might be encountered.