uCalc API Version: 2.1.3-preview.2 Released: 6/16/2026

Warning

uCalc API Preview Release Notice:The documentation describes the intended behavior of the API. The current preview build contains incomplete features, unoptimized performance, and is subject to breaking changes.

Description = [string]

Property

Product: 

Fast Math Parser

Class: 

uCalcBase

Retrieves or assigns a user-defined text description to a uCalc object, useful for attaching metadata and for debugging.

Remarks

The Description method provides a powerful way to attach arbitrary string metadata to most uCalc objects. This is invaluable for debugging, creating self-documenting configurations, and identifying specific components at runtime.

⚙️ Getter and Setter Behavior

This method is overloaded to function as both a getter and a setter:

  • Getter: When called with no arguments, Description() returns the current description of the object. If no description has been set, it returns an empty string.
  • Setter: When called with a string argument, Description("your text") sets the object's description. The setter supports a fluent interface, meaning it returns a reference to the object itself, allowing you to chain other method calls.

🎯 Supported Objects

A consistent description mechanism is available across a wide range of uCalc objects, including:

This consistency allows you to build robust logging and debugging tools for complex parsing and transformation tasks.

🤔 Why is this useful? (Comparison)

Without a built-in mechanism, developers often resort to external structures to track object metadata:

  • External Dictionaries: Managing a dictionary to map objects to strings can be cumbersome and lead to synchronization issues if objects are created or destroyed dynamically.
  • Wrapper Classes: Creating custom classes just to add a description field adds unnecessary boilerplate code.
  • Code Comments: Comments are static and cannot be accessed programmatically at runtime.

uCalc's integrated Description method avoids these issues by keeping the metadata tightly coupled with the object it describes. You can easily iterate through a collection of rules or tokens and print their intended purpose, which is especially useful when debugging why a particular input string was matched (or not matched). See the practical example below for a demonstration.

Examples

A quick example demonstrating how to set and get a description on a variable.
				
					using uCalcSoftware;

var uc = new uCalc();
// Define a variable and chain the Description() call to set metadata
var myVar = uc.DefineVariable("x = 10").SetDescription("Stores the current iteration count.");

// Retrieve and display the description
Console.WriteLine($"Description for 'x': {myVar.Description}");
				
			
Description for 'x': Stores the current iteration count.
				
					#include <iostream>
#include "uCalc.h"

using namespace std;
using namespace uCalcSoftware;

int main() {
   uCalc uc;
   // Define a variable and chain the Description() call to set metadata
   auto myVar = uc.DefineVariable("x = 10").SetDescription("Stores the current iteration count.");

   // Retrieve and display the description
   cout << "Description for 'x': " << myVar.Description() << endl;
}
				
			
Description for 'x': Stores the current iteration count.
				
					Imports System
Imports uCalcSoftware
Public Module Program
   Public Sub Main()
      Dim uc As New uCalc()
      '// Define a variable and chain the Description() call to set metadata
      Dim myVar = uc.DefineVariable("x = 10").SetDescription("Stores the current iteration count.")
      
      '// Retrieve and display the description
      Console.WriteLine($"Description for 'x': {myVar.Description}")
   End Sub
End Module
				
			
Description for 'x': Stores the current iteration count.
uCalc Description
				
					using uCalcSoftware;

var uc = new uCalc();
uc.Description = "This is the main uCalc object";
var t = uc.NewTransformer();
Console.WriteLine(t.Tokens.uCalc.Description);
				
			
This is the main uCalc object
				
					#include <iostream>
#include "uCalc.h"

using namespace std;
using namespace uCalcSoftware;

int main() {
   uCalc uc;
   uc.Description("This is the main uCalc object");
   auto t = uc.NewTransformer();
   cout << t.Tokens().uCalc().Description() << endl;
}
				
			
This is the main uCalc object
				
					Imports System
Imports uCalcSoftware
Public Module Program
   Public Sub Main()
      Dim uc As New uCalc()
      uc.Description = "This is the main uCalc object"
      Dim t = uc.NewTransformer()
      Console.WriteLine(t.Tokens.uCalc.Description)
   End Sub
End Module
				
			
This is the main uCalc object
Sets and retrieves a description for the main uCalc object.
				
					using uCalcSoftware;

var uc = new uCalc();
// Assign a description to the main uCalc instance
uc.Description = "Primary evaluator for financial calculations";

// Retrieve and print the description
Console.WriteLine(uc.Description);
				
			
Primary evaluator for financial calculations
				
					#include <iostream>
#include "uCalc.h"

using namespace std;
using namespace uCalcSoftware;

int main() {
   uCalc uc;
   // Assign a description to the main uCalc instance
   uc.Description("Primary evaluator for financial calculations");

   // Retrieve and print the description
   cout << uc.Description() << endl;
}
				
			
Primary evaluator for financial calculations
				
					Imports System
Imports uCalcSoftware
Public Module Program
   Public Sub Main()
      Dim uc As New uCalc()
      '// Assign a description to the main uCalc instance
      uc.Description = "Primary evaluator for financial calculations"
      
      '// Retrieve and print the description
      Console.WriteLine(uc.Description)
   End Sub
End Module
				
			
Primary evaluator for financial calculations
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