Self and arrays problems - objective-c

Question

I am new to Objective C and I'm having trouble getting my head around a few things.
I am trying to make a big integer program, from which I read items entered in a string and put them into an individual elements in the array.
I am currently working on an add method which adds elements from both the arrays together to make a big number stored in a final array.
But I'm kind of confused about to get this array I made from the initWithString method into the array method. I have some understanding of self, but I don't really know how to use it in this sense.
#implementation MPInteger
{
}
-(id) initWithString: (NSString *) x
{
self = [super init];
if (self) {
NSMutableArray *intString = [NSMutableArray array];
for (int i = 0; i < [x length]; i++) {
NSString *ch = [x substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(i, 1)];
[intString addObject:ch];
}
}
return self;
}
-(NSString *) description
{
return self.description;
}
-(MPInteger *) add: (MPInteger *) x
{
//NSMutableArray *arr1 = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:100];
//NSMutableArray *arr2 = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:100];
//for (int i=0; i < 100; i++) {
//int r = arc4random_uniform(1000);
//NSNumber *n = [NSNumber numberWithInteger:r];
//[arr1 addObject:n];
//[arr2 addObject:n];
// }
self.array = [NSMutableArray initialize];
return x;
}
#end
int main(int argc, const char * argv[]) {
#autoreleasepool {
MPInteger *x = [[MPInteger alloc] initWithString:#"123456789"];
MPInteger *y = [[MPInteger alloc] initWithString:#"123456789"];
[x add: y];
}
}
So I want too add the x and y arrays, but I'm not sure how to get the arrays in the add method. Do I use self to represent one of the arrays and initialise it, and x to represent the other. I don't know if I'm going about it completely the wrong way. Some help to understand would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

When referring to self you're actually accessing the current instance of the class. In other languages this may be implemented as this instead. There are a couple ways of designing the approach you're going for but the simplest pattern is probably composition:
#interface MPInteger
{
NSMutableArray *digits;
}
#end
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
#implementation MPInteger
-(id) initWithString: (NSString *) x
{
// Create a new instance of this class (MPInteger) with a default
// constructor and assign it to the current instance (self).
self = [super init];
if (self) {
// Previously we initialized a string, but then threw it out!
// Instead, let's save it to our string representation:
self->digits = [NSMutableArray array];
for (int i = 0; i < [x length]; i++) {
NSString *ch = [x substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(i, 1)];
[self->digits addObject:ch];
}
return self;
}
// Depending on how you want to implement this function, it could return
// a new MPInteger class or update the current instance (self):
-(MPInteger *) add: (MPInteger *) x
{
NSArray *a = self->digits;
NSArray *b = x->digits;
// Have both strings for A + B, so use them to find C:
NSArray *c = ????;
// Return a new instance of MPInteger with the result:
return [ [ MPInteger alloc ] initWithString:c ];
}
#end
Notice that now the MPInteger class has an instance of an NSString object that will exist during the entire lifetime of the MPInteger object. To update/access this string, all you need to do is say:
self->digits