Type Conversion

Tova provides safe type conversion functions that return nil on failure instead of throwing errors.

to_int

toInt(v) -> Int | Nil

Converts a value to an integer. Returns nil if conversion fails.

toInt("42")       // 42
toInt("3.7")      // 3
toInt(3.7)        // 3
toInt(true)       // 1
toInt(false)      // 0
toInt("abc")      // nil

to_float

toFloat(v) -> Float | Nil

Converts a value to a floating-point number. Returns nil if conversion fails.

toFloat("3.14")   // 3.14
toFloat("42")     // 42.0
toFloat(true)     // 1.0
toFloat(false)    // 0.0
toFloat("abc")    // nil

to_string

toString(v) -> String

Converts any value to its string representation. Nil becomes "nil", tagged types show their tag.

toString(42)      // "42"
toString(3.14)    // "3.14"
toString(true)    // "true"
toString(nil)     // "nil"
toString(Ok(5))   // "Ok(5)"
toString(None)    // "None"

to_bool

toBool(v) -> Bool

Converts a value to a boolean. Strings "", "0", and "false" are falsy; all other strings are truthy.

toBool("")        // false
toBool("0")       // false
toBool("false")   // false
toBool("hello")   // true
toBool(0)         // false
toBool(1)         // true
toBool(nil)       // false

---

Pipeline Examples

// Parse user input safely
user_input
  |> toInt()
  |> fn(n) if n != nil { clamp(n, 1, 100) } else { 50 }

// Convert list of strings to ints, filtering failures
["1", "2", "abc", "4"]
  |> map(fn(s) toInt(s))
  |> filter(fn(n) n != nil)    // [1, 2, 4]