Java String Buffer Treated As String In ColdFusion (When Needed)

Just a tiny discovery here: ColdFusion will automatically convert a Java String Buffer to a string when it is required for a method call. Here's a little demo:

Here we are storing the contents of an XML document inside the Java String Buffer. Then, we try passing it as an argument to two ColdFusion functions, XmlParse() and HtmlEditFormat(), both of which require a parameter of type String. This code works perfectly well, no ColdFusion errors get thrown.

At first, I assumed that the code is attempting to call the ToString() method on the object or something? But this doesn't exactly make sense because any Java object that extends the java.lang.Object class has a ToString() method, and this auto-string-conversion does NOT work for all data types.

Take, for example, the array. You can call the .ToString() method on a ColdFusion array:

... and it will output:

[1, 2, 3]

However, if you were to pass in the array to the WriteOutput() method, ColdFusion would throw the following error:

Complex object types cannot be converted to simple values. The expression has requested a variable or an intermediate expression result as a simple value, however, the result cannot be converted to a simple value. Simple values are strings, numbers, boolean values, and date/time values. Queries, arrays, and COM objects are examples of complex values.

So, this leads me to believe that ColdFusion isn't just calling .ToString() behind the scenes. I wonder if there is special code in these methods to check for String Buffers.