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Re: KVC - how to get properties into a common form?
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Re: KVC - how to get properties into a common form?


  • Subject: Re: KVC - how to get properties into a common form?
  • From: Jens Alfke <email@hidden>
  • Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 07:54:31 -0700


On 3 Apr '08, at 5:19 AM, Matt Gough wrote:

Is there an easy way to convert whatever <id> is into a common form (a string, in my case), or do I have to have a huge switch statement that checks the class and calls different code for each kind to convert to a string? (or similar, like an NSObject category that implements -stringValue, overridden for every class). Just wondering if there's something built-in that will do this already.


There is -description, but that probably isn't what you want.

I think it's probably the best option. For classes that have a "natural" string representation, like NSString and NSNumber, - description returns it. For others, it at least returns something readable.


The problem, Graham, is that it's ambiguous what the string representation of an arbitrary object is supposed to be. With a few exceptions as above, it tends to be pretty task-specific. Should an array look like "a, b, c", or "{a; b; c;}" or "<item>a</item> <item>b</ item> <item>c</item>" or ...? So there can't be a single built-in method that does the right thing for every purpose.

—Jens

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  • Follow-Ups:
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References: 
 >KVC - how to get properties into a common form? (From: Graham Cox <email@hidden>)
 >Re: KVC - how to get properties into a common form? (From: Matt Gough <email@hidden>)

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