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iOS

kirkbyo
kirkbyo
15,791 Points
Posted by kirkbyo
kirkbyo
15,791 Points

Having trouble understanding a few concepts

I am having trouble understanding a few things with Objective-C. The first thing is self, I don't understand when to use it and when not too. Another concept that is not very clear to me is when to use square brackets. Ex: [self.tableView indexPathForSelectedRow]

Thank you in advance,

Ozzie

1 Answer

Jeremy Lindstrom
Jeremy Lindstrom
6,646 Points

Info on self: Self is really just a way to refer to the object that receiving this message..

Self description on Apple Docs

Here's a little info on brackets and general Obj-C info

Objective-C maintains all the same syntax and features of C. The object-oriented features that were added were done so in the model of Smalltalk, in which we send messages to objects (more on these later) in this manner:

mug makeEmpty (The makeEmpty message is sent to the mug object.) In Objective-C we simply surround such actions with square brackets:

[mug makeEmpty] What may seem like an arbitrary collection of brackets at first will, with time and practice, make sense as a mechanism for organizing code around these object-oriented concepts that were added as a thin layer on top of the world of C code.