What is tostring? Why do we use it and why is it useful?

tostring() is a function that converts (almost) any given data type to a string. There are numerous uses for it:

• Converting something to a string to perform formatting on it.
• Converting a number, or almost any other data type, to a string for concatenation purposes. In Roblox only, you are able to concatenate a number to a string without using tostring(). However, you need tostring() for any other data type.
• Converting a boolean to a string for printing purposes, or GUI purposes.
• etc.

For conditional purposes, tostring() will viably compare its given data type to a string. Two examples of this:

print(tostring(10) == "10") -- true
print(tostring(5 * 6 > 4^2) == tostring(true)) -- true

When converting tables to strings, it will just give the identifier instead of the table contents:

print(tostring({})) -- table: <identifier>

For concatenating numbers, tostring() is not necessary. This print, for example...

print(5 .. 6) -- 56

...will convert both numbers to strings before concatenating them.

tostring is a function that converts a given number to a string. This can be useful for stuff like if statements. If you want to compare say, a math equation to a TextBox's text, you will need to use tostring (or tonumber) to compare the two, as two different data types can not be compared.