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iOS

Posted by Adam Doyle
Adam Doyle
Courses Plus Student 681 Points

NS Prefix in Objective-C Framework

Hey

Hope your studies are going great.

Can anyone tell me where the "NS" prefix came from?

I've done an, admittedly small amount, of reading and came up with two "answers".

Next/Sun & NextStep?

Anyone have a real "solid" answer?

Cheers

Adam

4 Answers

Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points
Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points

Hi Adam,

I wasn't aware of the fact that you need this info for a kind of dissertation - that's another thing, of course :)

You can cite something like:

"iOS Programming THE BIG NERD RANCH GUIDE" 4th edition, 02/2014 ISBN-10 0321942051 by Christian Keur, Aaron Hillegass and Joe Conway Page 63 second last chapter on the page: "The classes NSArray and NSString belong to the Foundation framework. (the NS stands for NeXTSTEP, the platform for which these classes were originally designed.)"

Info about Aaron: Aaron Hillegass is the founder of BNR and a former employee at NeXT and Apple, has nearly two decades' experience programming and teaching Objective-C, Cocoa, and, more recently, iOS. Aaron is the co-author of Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and Objective-C Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide.

And if you've got still questions I'd encourage you to contact Aaron at @AaronHillegass as he has been working on this very matter as an former employee at NeXT by himself and he's a really very nice guy :)

Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points
Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points

Hi Adam Doyle ,

Indeed it really is from the NeXTSTEP heritage :)

Holger Liesegang
Holger Liesegang
50,595 Points

Oh, and btw why Sun: At a later time NeXT teamed up with Sun Microsystems to develop OpenStep (NeXTSTEP 4.0), a cross-platform object-oriented API standard derived from NeXTSTEP. You might want to have a look at What does "NS" means ? too.

Adam Doyle
PLUS
Adam Doyle
Courses Plus Student 681 Points
Adam Doyle
Adam Doyle
Courses Plus Student 681 Points

Thanks for your reply Holger.

I had a look at that discussion you provided and even that has multiple opinions from several developers in the community.

However, I'm still not convinced as to where it came from as none of those are peer reviewed or have any academic credibility to them.

For example, Ondra Cada argued that is does not stand for NextStep and indeed did change when Sun came in to the mix. While on the other hand Bill Bumgarner agreed with another post suggesting that the prefix was before Sun entered the picture. They are just a few peoples opinions; perhaps right, perhaps not.

Great food for thought and discussion tho.

Thanks again,

Adam

P.S. I personally believe that it is for NextStep. I just don't have any hard facts to back up my argument for a University Thesis.

Adam Doyle
PLUS
Adam Doyle
Courses Plus Student 681 Points
Adam Doyle
Adam Doyle
Courses Plus Student 681 Points

Hi Holger

Thank you very, very much for that information.

That is fantastic!!!

You have been an amazing help; hopefully one day I can return the favor.

Cheers

Adam