Elixir is a functional language, and has the option of modules and protocols so you can define XML#to_string in two ways. Either as a protocol so you could do

Elixir is a functional language, and has the option of modules and protocols so you can define XML#to_string in two ways. Either as a protocol so you could do to_string(this_xml) Or as a function within the module so you could do XML.to_string(this_xml) If you use the module function defintion you can import it into your scope via import XML then you can write to_string(this_xml) as if it were a protocol.