Characterizing StringTemplate

ST is a dynamically typed, pure functional language with dynamic scoping and lazy evaluation. Those fancy terms highlight some important characteristics, so let’s define them:

  • Dynamically typed: ST uses toString to convert attributes to string values. Since all Java objects answer this method, ST works with any Java object. Also, if you ask for property b of attribute a (with a.b), it’s up to you to make sure attribute a has that property at run-time. Python and Ruby programmers should feel very much at home.

  • Pure functional: All expressions are side-effect free. There’s no direct way for ST to alter data values or data structures that we pass in. (Well, you could code a toString method to erase the hard drive, but ...

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