I was doing some tinkering with tree traversals (which I have solved in a much more straightforward way) but I have come across an issue in the following piece of Objective C logic:
- (NSString *)someWrapperFunction
{
NSString *result = #"";
NSString *(^appendBlock)(int, NSString **) = ^NSString *(int a, NSString **adder){
if (a == 0)
{
// base case
return #"";
}
NSLog(#"%d", a);
*adder = [*adder stringByAppendingFormat:#"-%d-", a];
NSLog(#"adder: %#", *adder);
return [*adder stringByAppendingString:appendBlock(a-1, adder)];
};
appendBlock(5, &result);
return result;
}
Basically, I want to create a block of code that concatenates numbers into the given string (adder). The result should be: "-5--4--3--2--1-".
I get a segmentation fault with the above code but with some other code that I wrote for the tree traversal, the adder string was essentially not getting updated. Any pointers to what I am doing wrong here? (Is it possible that the variable that is being updated by the inner block (inside recursion) is disallowed as it is already being occupied by the outer block OR is it just that NSString is non-mutable data type?)
In any case, I want to keep the design of the function the same; how would I solve this problem (using c/objective)?
After some searching and experimenting I found a way to fix this.
There is no reason to be using a double-pointer for your adder parameter in the block. Just use a regular pointer and update your code accordingly.
The error is coming from the fact that inside of the block, appendBlock is NULL and you end up dereferencing the NULL pointer trying to call it.
Here's an updated version that works:
- (NSString *)someWrapperFunction
{
NSString *result = #"";
NSString *(^appendBlock)(int, NSString *);
__block __weak NSString *(^weakBlock)(int, NSString *);
weakBlock = appendBlock = ^NSString *(int a, NSString *adder){
NSString *(^innerBlock)(int, NSString *) = weakBlock;
if (a == 0)
{
// base case
return #"";
}
NSLog(#"%d", a);
adder = [adder stringByAppendingFormat:#"-%d-", a];
NSLog(#"adder: %#", adder);
// Split this update to make it easier to debug.
NSString *update = innerBlock(a-1, adder);
return [adder stringByAppendingString:update];
};
appendBlock(5, result);
return result;
}
Output: "-5--4--3--2--1-"
This update is rewritten for point #1 (which really has nothing to do with your original issue.
To solve point #2 this update creates the original appendBlock variable as well as a new __block __weak weakBlock reference to the same block. And then inside the block, a new (strong) block pointer is created to reference the weak block pointer. Without the use of the weak pointer, the code works but causes a warning.
I need to use a method that returns several strings, different ones, according to a value.
My code looks like:
- (void) returnStringsAccordingToSet:(NSString *)string1: (NSString *)string2: (NSInteger)setNo {
switch (setNo){
case 1:
if (generalStringSettings){
string1 = #"The first string";
string2 = #"The second string";
} else {
string1 = #"The first other string";
string2 = #"The second other string";
}
break;
case 2:
...
break;
case 3:
...
break;
}
}
I call that method with:
NSString *firstString = [[NSString alloc]init];
NSString *secondString = [[NSString alloc]init];
NSUInteger set = 1;
[self getStringsAccordingToSet: firstString: secondString: set];
I can't get it to work! All I get is empty strings. I've got a feeling that the call for the strings is somewhat wrong. Please help.
You can't mae it work because when you do
string1 = #"The first string";
you just override the local parameter and update its reference but nothing outside the callee is modified. So the value is changed just inside the scope of the function.
You should change the signature of the method to
- (NSArray*) returnStringsAccordingToSet:(NSString *)string1: (NSString *)string2: (NSInteger)setNo {
so that it returns a NSArray instead that nothing and then inside the function
case1:
return [NSArray arrayWithObjects:#"The first string",#"The second string",nil];
so you return the array and store it from the caller, then you can access the returned values.
NSArray *v = [returnStringAccordingTo: ..];
[v objectAtIndex:0]
Technically, since ObjectiveC is a superset of C, I guess it is possible to pass a pointer to a pointer to NSString by reference through (but this is discouraged in ObjC):
NSString *string = nil;
[self callMethod:&string];
-(void)callMethod:(NSString**)refToString {
*refToString = #"foobar";
You could do this by filling a NSArray, but just to show how C works I'll show the error that you made.
string1 and string2 are just pointers, so you can pass either mutable or immutable strings as arguments.But the original pointer never gets modified, for example:
NSString* string1=#"Hello"; // Let's suppose string1 is on the 0x8000 address
// And points to the 0x9000 address
NSString* string2=#"How are you?"; // string2: 0x1000 , pointing to 0x2000
[self returnStringsAccordingToSet: string1: string1 string2: string2];
Then when you call a method a copy is made for every pointer that you pass to the method:
- (void) returnStringsAccordingToSet:(NSString *)string1: (NSString *)string2: (NSInteger)setNo {
// string1 and string2 both point on the same address, but they are other pointers
// for example string1 is on 0x7000 and string2 on 0x7400, pointing to 0x9000
// and 0x2000
switch (setNo){
case 1:
if (generalStringSettings){
string1 = #"The first string"; // You just create another instance
string2 = #"The second string"; // of the string, but the original
// pointers aren't affected
} else {
string1 = #"The first other string";
string2 = #"The second other string";
}
break;
case 2:
...
break;
case 3:
...
break;
}
}
The solutions:
Pass a NSMutableString as argument and instead of assigning them, just modify the contents;
Pass a pointer to pointer;
Return a NSArray containing the new strings.
Update note: I personally don't use the method as a first thing to do. I use arrays if that's possible. Not sure if it's OK to use this with ARC. Some Apple methods use this approach to return error value, so it's good to be aware of it.
When method is called, those arguments you pass to function are copied (of course they are not getting the copy message, pointer is copied as far as you pass pointer), and those copies are used inside the function (or more technically initiated with the argument value). So if you change the copy (i.e. try to replace object on pointer, mutable objects are OK to modify) this will not reflect on the value. You may solve this using pointers (i.e. pass pointer to pointer).
So:
NSString* string = #"one string";
NSLog(string); // one string
// [self method:string]
- (void) method: (NSString*) string {
// Local copy created:
// NSString* string = copy of string (second pointer created, object not copied in memory)
string = #"other string";
NSLog(string); // other string
}
NSLog(string); // one string
You may do this like that:
- (void) method: (NSString**)str {
*str = #"Some string";
}
and then:
// string = "old vlalue"
NSString* string = #"old value";
// string = "Some string"
[self method:&string];
This has given me quite a big headache. For whatever reason, when I use this code, the if statement always evaluates to false:
while(!feof(file))
{
NSString *line = [self readNSString:file];
NSLog(#"%#", line);
NSLog(#"%#", search);
NSRange textRange;
textRange =[line rangeOfString:search];
if(textRange.location != NSNotFound)
{
NSString *result = [line substringFromIndex:NSMaxRange([line rangeOfString:search])];
resultView.text = result;
}
else
{
resultView.text = #"Not found";
}
}
When the functions execute, the two NSLogs tell me that the "line" and "search" strings are what they should be, so then why does the if statement always evaluate to false? I must be missing something simple, having another set of eyes would be great. Thanks
edit: (function "readNSString")
- (NSString*)readNSString:(FILE*) file
{
char buffer[300];
NSMutableString *result = [NSMutableString stringWithCapacity:256];
int read;
do
{
if(fscanf(file, "%299[^\n]%n%*c", buffer, &read) == 1)
[result appendFormat:#"%s", buffer];
else
break;
} while(r == 299);
return result;
}
edit 2:
search is set with a call to the first function, with an NSString* variable as a parameter, like this:
NSString *textFieldText = [[NSString alloc]
initWithFormat:#"%#", textField.text];
[self readFile:textFieldText];
edit 3 (NSLogs output)
line: Germany Italy France
search: Italy
I think that you are using the rangeOfString and the NSNotFound etc. correctly, so the problem is possibly to do with the creation of the string from the data read from the file using the appendFormat:#"%s".
I suspect there may be an encoding issue between your two string formats - I would investigate whether the "%s" encodes the null terminated C string properly into the same format as a unicode NSString with the appropriate encoding.
Try hard coding the value you are getting from the readNSString function as a string literal in code just for testing and see if that comparison works, if so this would tend to indicate it probably is something to do with the encoding of the string created from the file.
I've come from a java background, so i'm still getting to grips with some of the ways of doing things with Obj-C.
Depending on a number provided, I want an NSString variable to have different contents.
In java I would do something like this:
string foo;
switch (numberToSwtich){
case 1:
foo = "Something!";
break;
case 2:
foo = "Something Else!";
break;
}
Obviously there are two types of String in objective-c. NSString and NSSMutableString.
The difference being that you can change one at a later date. However, like java, can I initialize a NSString first then set its contents later or do I need to use an NSMutableString?
Something a bit like this...
NSString *aString = [[NSString alloc] init];
switch ([self getNumberOfSides]) {
case 1:
aString = #"A String";
break;
case 2:
aString = #"Another String";
break;
}
I'm aware there are other-ways of doing this, such as using an NSDictionary with numeric keys for example, but I would like to use a switch.
Thanks.
Your code is perfectly valid. There's no need to use NSMutableString.
Your code does leak memory, because you're not releasing the empty string you allocated using alloc. It's better to use the "string" class method for empty strings:
NSString *aString;
switch ([self getNumberOfSides]) {
case 1:
aString = #"A String";
break;
case 2:
aString = #"Another String";
break;
default:
aString = [NSString string];
break;
}
I'm doing some Objective-C programming that involves parsing an NSXmlDocument and populating an objects properties from the result.
First version looked like this:
if([elementName compare:#"companyName"] == 0)
[character setCorporationName:currentElementText];
else if([elementName compare:#"corporationID"] == 0)
[character setCorporationID:currentElementText];
else if([elementName compare:#"name"] == 0)
...
But I don't like the if-else-if-else pattern this produces. Looking at the switch statement I see that i can only handle ints, chars etc and not objects... so is there a better implementation pattern I'm not aware of?
BTW I did actually come up with a better solution for setting the object's properties, but I want to know specifically about the if-else vs switch pattern in Objective-C
You should take advantage of Key-Value Coding:
[character setValue:currentElementText forKey:elementName];
If the data is untrusted, you might want to check that the key is valid:
if (![validKeysCollection containsObject:elementName])
// Exception or error
I hope you'll all forgive me for going out on a limb here, but I would like to address the more general question of parsing XML documents in Cocoa without the need of if-else statements. The question as originally stated assigns the current element text to an instance variable of the character object. As jmah pointed out, this can be solved using key-value coding. However, in a more complex XML document this might not be possible. Consider for example the following.
<xmlroot>
<corporationID>
<stockSymbol>EXAM</stockSymbol>
<uuid>31337</uuid>
</corporationID>
<companyName>Example Inc.</companyName>
</xmlroot>
There are multiple approaches to dealing with this. Off of the top of my head, I can think of two using NSXMLDocument. The first uses NSXMLElement. It is fairly straightforward and does not involve the if-else issue at all. You simply get the root element and go through its named elements one by one.
NSXMLElement* root = [xmlDocument rootElement];
// Assuming that we only have one of each element.
[character setCorperationName:[[[root elementsForName:#"companyName"] objectAtIndex:0] stringValue]];
NSXMLElement* corperationId = [root elementsForName:#"corporationID"];
[character setCorperationStockSymbol:[[[corperationId elementsForName:#"stockSymbol"] objectAtIndex:0] stringValue]];
[character setCorperationUUID:[[[corperationId elementsForName:#"uuid"] objectAtIndex:0] stringValue]];
The next one uses the more general NSXMLNode, walks through the tree, and directly uses the if-else structure.
// The first line is the same as the last example, because NSXMLElement inherits from NSXMLNode
NSXMLNode* aNode = [xmlDocument rootElement];
while(aNode = [aNode nextNode]){
if([[aNode name] isEqualToString:#"companyName"]){
[character setCorperationName:[aNode stringValue]];
}else if([[aNode name] isEqualToString:#"corporationID"]){
NSXMLNode* correctParent = aNode;
while((aNode = [aNode nextNode]) == nil && [aNode parent != correctParent){
if([[aNode name] isEqualToString:#"stockSymbol"]){
[character setCorperationStockSymbol:[aNode stringValue]];
}else if([[aNode name] isEqualToString:#"uuid"]){
[character setCorperationUUID:[aNode stringValue]];
}
}
}
}
This is a good candidate for eliminating the if-else structure, but like the original problem, we can't simply use switch-case here. However, we can still eliminate if-else by using performSelector. The first step is to define the a method for each element.
- (NSNode*)parse_companyName:(NSNode*)aNode
{
[character setCorperationName:[aNode stringValue]];
return aNode;
}
- (NSNode*)parse_corporationID:(NSNode*)aNode
{
NSXMLNode* correctParent = aNode;
while((aNode = [aNode nextNode]) == nil && [aNode parent != correctParent){
[self invokeMethodForNode:aNode prefix:#"parse_corporationID_"];
}
return [aNode previousNode];
}
- (NSNode*)parse_corporationID_stockSymbol:(NSNode*)aNode
{
[character setCorperationStockSymbol:[aNode stringValue]];
return aNode;
}
- (NSNode*)parse_corporationID_uuid:(NSNode*)aNode
{
[character setCorperationUUID:[aNode stringValue]];
return aNode;
}
The magic happens in the invokeMethodForNode:prefix: method. We generate the selector based on the name of the element, and perform that selector with aNode as the only parameter. Presto bango, we've eliminated the need for an if-else statement. Here's the code for that method.
- (NSNode*)invokeMethodForNode:(NSNode*)aNode prefix:(NSString*)aPrefix
{
NSNode* ret = nil;
NSString* methodName = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#%#:", prefix, [aNode name]];
SEL selector = NSSelectorFromString(methodName);
if([self respondsToSelector:selector])
ret = [self performSelector:selector withObject:aNode];
return ret;
}
Now, instead of our larger if-else statement (the one that differentiated between companyName and corporationID), we can simply write one line of code
NSXMLNode* aNode = [xmlDocument rootElement];
while(aNode = [aNode nextNode]){
aNode = [self invokeMethodForNode:aNode prefix:#"parse_"];
}
Now I apologize if I got any of this wrong, it's been a while since I've written anything with NSXMLDocument, it's late at night and I didn't actually test this code. So if you see anything wrong, please leave a comment or edit this answer.
However, I believe I have just shown how properly-named selectors can be used in Cocoa to completely eliminate if-else statements in cases like this. There are a few gotchas and corner cases. The performSelector: family of methods only takes 0, 1, or 2 argument methods whose arguments and return types are objects, so if the types of the arguments and return type are not objects, or if there are more than two arguments, then you would have to use an NSInvocation to invoke it. You have to make sure that the method names you generate aren't going to call other methods, especially if the target of the call is another object, and this particular method naming scheme won't work on elements with non-alphanumeric characters. You could get around that by escaping the XML element names in your method names somehow, or by building an NSDictionary using the method names as the keys and the selectors as the values. This can get pretty memory intensive and end up taking a longer time. performSelector dispatch like I described is pretty fast. For very large if-else statements, this method may even be faster than an if-else statement.
If you want to use as little code as possible, and your element names and setters are all named so that if elementName is #"foo" then setter is setFoo:, you could do something like:
SEL selector = NSSelectorFromString([NSString stringWithFormat:#"set%#:", [elementName capitalizedString]]);
[character performSelector:selector withObject:currentElementText];
or possibly even:
[character setValue:currentElementText forKey:elementName]; // KVC-style
Though these will of course be a bit slower than using a bunch of if statements.
[Edit: The second option was already mentioned by someone; oops!]
Dare I suggest using a macro?
#define TEST( _name, _method ) \
if ([elementName isEqualToString:# _name] ) \
[character _method:currentElementText]; else
#define ENDTEST { /* empty */ }
TEST( "companyName", setCorporationName )
TEST( "setCorporationID", setCorporationID )
TEST( "name", setName )
:
:
ENDTEST
One way I've done this with NSStrings is by using an NSDictionary and enums. It may not be the most elegant, but I think it makes the code a little more readable. The following pseudocode is extracted from one of my projects:
typedef enum { UNKNOWNRESIDUE, DEOXYADENINE, DEOXYCYTOSINE, DEOXYGUANINE, DEOXYTHYMINE } SLSResidueType;
static NSDictionary *pdbResidueLookupTable;
...
if (pdbResidueLookupTable == nil)
{
pdbResidueLookupTable = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjectsAndKeys:
[NSNumber numberWithInteger:DEOXYADENINE], #"DA",
[NSNumber numberWithInteger:DEOXYCYTOSINE], #"DC",
[NSNumber numberWithInteger:DEOXYGUANINE], #"DG",
[NSNumber numberWithInteger:DEOXYTHYMINE], #"DT",
nil];
}
SLSResidueType residueIdentifier = [[pdbResidueLookupTable objectForKey:residueType] intValue];
switch (residueIdentifier)
{
case DEOXYADENINE: do something; break;
case DEOXYCYTOSINE: do something; break;
case DEOXYGUANINE: do something; break;
case DEOXYTHYMINE: do something; break;
}
The if-else implementation you have is the right way to do this, since switch won't work with objects. Apart from maybe being a bit harder to read (which is subjective), there is no real downside in using if-else statements this way.
Although there's not necessarily a better way to do something like that for one time use, why use "compare" when you can use "isEqualToString"? That would seem to be more performant since the comparison would halt at the first non-matching character, rather than going through the whole thing to calculate a valid comparison result (though come to think of it the comparison might be clear at the same point) - also though it would look a little cleaner because that call returns a BOOL.
if([elementName isEqualToString:#"companyName"] )
[character setCorporationName:currentElementText];
else if([elementName isEqualToString:#"corporationID"] )
[character setCorporationID:currentElementText];
else if([elementName isEqualToString:#"name"] )
There is actually a fairly simple way to deal with cascading if-else statements in a language like Objective-C. Yes, you can use subclassing and overriding, creating a group of subclasses that implement the same method differently, invoking the correct implementation at runtime using a common message. This works well if you wish to choose one of a few implementations, but it can result in a needless proliferation of subclasses if you have many small, slightly different implementations like you tend to have in long if-else or switch statements.
Instead, factor out the body of each if/else-if clause into its own method, all in the same class. Name the messages that invoke them in a similar fashion. Now create an NSArray containing the selectors of those messages (obtained using #selector()). Coerce the string you were testing in the conditionals into a selector using NSSelectorFromString() (you may need to concatenate additional words or colons to it first depending on how you named those messages, and whether or not they take arguments). Now have self perform the selector using performSelector:.
This approach has the downside that it can clutter-up the class with many new messages, but it's probably better to clutter-up a single class than the entire class hierarchy with new subclasses.
Posting this as a response to Wevah's answer above -- I would've edited, but I don't have high enough reputation yet:
unfortunately the first method breaks for fields with more than one word in them -- like xPosition. capitalizedString will convert that to Xposition, which when combined with the format give you setXposition: . Definitely not what was wanted here. Here is what I'm using in my code:
NSString *capName = [elementName stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:NSMakeRange(0, 1) withString:[[elementName substringToIndex:1] uppercaseString]];
SEL selector = NSSelectorFromString([NSString stringWithFormat:#"set%#:", capName]);
Not as pretty as the first method, but it works.
I have come up with a solution that uses blocks to create a switch-like structure for objects. There it goes:
BOOL switch_object(id aObject, ...)
{
va_list args;
va_start(args, aObject);
id value = nil;
BOOL matchFound = NO;
while ( (value = va_arg(args,id)) )
{
void (^block)(void) = va_arg(args,id);
if ( [aObject isEqual:value] )
{
block();
matchFound = YES;
break;
}
}
va_end(args);
return matchFound;
}
As you can see, this is an oldschool C function with variable argument list. I pass the object to be tested in the first argument, followed by the case_value-case_block pairs. (Recall that Objective-C blocks are just objects.) The while loop keeps extracting these pairs until the object value is matched or there are no cases left (see notes below).
Usage:
NSString* str = #"stuff";
switch_object(str,
#"blah", ^{
NSLog(#"blah");
},
#"foobar", ^{
NSLog(#"foobar");
},
#"stuff", ^{
NSLog(#"stuff");
},
#"poing", ^{
NSLog(#"poing");
},
nil); // <-- sentinel
// will print "stuff"
Notes:
this is a first approximation without any error checking
the fact that the case handlers are blocks, requires additional care when it comes to visibility, scope and memory management of variables referenced from within
if you forget the sentinel, you are doomed :P
you can use the boolean return value to trigger a "default" case when none of the cases have been matched
The most common refactoring suggested for eliminating if-else or switch statements is introducing polymorphism (see http://www.refactoring.com/catalog/replaceConditionalWithPolymorphism.html). Eliminating such conditionals is most important when they are duplicated. In the case of XML parsing like your sample you are essentially moving the data to a more natural structure so that you won't have to duplicate the conditional elsewhere. In this case the if-else or switch statement is probably good enough.
In this case, I'm not sure if you can easily refactor the class to introduce polymorphism as Bradley suggests, since it's a Cocoa-native class. Instead, the Objective-C way to do it is to use a class category to add an elementNameCode method to NSSting:
typedef enum {
companyName = 0,
companyID,
...,
Unknown
} ElementCode;
#interface NSString (ElementNameCodeAdditions)
- (ElementCode)elementNameCode;
#end
#implementation NSString (ElementNameCodeAdditions)
- (ElementCode)elementNameCode {
if([self compare:#"companyName"]==0) {
return companyName;
} else if([self compare:#"companyID"]==0) {
return companyID;
} ... {
}
return Unknown;
}
#end
In your code, you could now use a switch on [elementName elementNameCode] (and gain the associated compiler warnings if you forget to test for one of the enum members etc.).
As Bradley points out, this may not be worth it if the logic is only used in one place.
What we've done in our projects where we need to so this sort of thing over and over, is to set up a static CFDictionary mapping the strings/objects to check against to a simple integer value. It leads to code that looks like this:
static CFDictionaryRef map = NULL;
int count = 3;
const void *keys[count] = { #"key1", #"key2", #"key3" };
const void *values[count] = { (uintptr_t)1, (uintptr_t)2, (uintptr_t)3 };
if (map == NULL)
map = CFDictionaryCreate(NULL,keys,values,count,&kCFTypeDictionaryKeyCallBacks,NULL);
switch((uintptr_t)CFDictionaryGetValue(map,[node name]))
{
case 1:
// do something
break;
case 2:
// do something else
break;
case 3:
// this other thing too
break;
}
If you're targeting Leopard only, you could use an NSMapTable instead of a CFDictionary.
Similar to Lvsti I am using blocks to perform a switching pattern on objects.
I wrote a very simple filter block based chain, that takes n filter blocks and performs each filter on the object.
Each filter can alter the object, but must return it. No matter what.
NSObject+Functional.h
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
typedef id(^FilterBlock)(id element, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop);
#interface NSObject (Functional)
-(id)processByPerformingFilterBlocks:(NSArray *)filterBlocks;
#end
NSObject+Functional.m
#implementation NSObject (Functional)
-(id)processByPerformingFilterBlocks:(NSArray *)filterBlocks
{
__block id blockSelf = self;
[filterBlocks enumerateObjectsUsingBlock:^( id (^block)(id,NSUInteger idx, BOOL*) , NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop) {
blockSelf = block(blockSelf, idx, stop);
}];
return blockSelf;
}
#end
Now we can set up n FilterBlocks to test for the different cases.
FilterBlock caseYES = ^id(id element, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *breakAfter){
if ([element isEqualToString:#"YES"]) {
NSLog(#"You did it");
*breakAfter = YES;
}
return element;
};
FilterBlock caseNO = ^id(id element, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *breakAfter){
if ([element isEqualToString:#"NO"] ) {
NSLog(#"Nope");
*breakAfter = YES;
}
return element;
};
Now we stick those block we want to test as a filter chain in an array:
NSArray *filters = #[caseYES, caseNO];
and can perform it on an object
id obj1 = #"YES";
id obj2 = #"NO";
[obj1 processByPerformingFilterBlocks:filters];
[obj2 processByPerformingFilterBlocks:filters];
This approach can be used for switching but also for any (conditional) filter chain application, as the blocks can edit the element and pass it on.