Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

Here it is again, in slow motion:
NSObject *object; // Declaration
object = // Assignment
[NSObject alloc]; // Allocation
[object init]; // Initialization
CAUTION This is just an example. Apple recommends you never call alloc and init on two
different lines.
Once an object is instantiated, memory management gets a bit more complicated, so we’ll
have to come back to it. The traditional memory management scheme is discussed in the
“Objective-C Memory Management” section. The new garbage collection API is discussed in
the “Objective-C 2.0” section.
Scalars
In C, scalars are width specific, but in general, you want to use scalars with the same width as the
architecture for which it is compiled. Leopard introduces width-agnostic scalars that resolve into
the architecture’s native width, as shown in Table 26-1.
Table 26-1. Width-Agnostic Versions of C Scalars
Leopard C Description
NSInteger int, long Signed integer
NSUInteger unsigned int, unsigned long Unsigned integer
CGFloat float, double Floating-point number
Logging
C’s printf and friends have no concept of Objective-C objects, other than that they are pointers.
The function NSLog has all the tokens and formatting features of printf but adds the %@ token,
which calls any object’s description method.
Strings
In C, a string is just an array of char terminated with NULL. In Objective-C, you should use the
NSString class. As an object, NSString provides several built-in methods and a mutable subclass,
as well as handling things such as Unicode. NSString constants can be declared inline with a compiler
directive in the form @"This is a string".
Arrays
CHAPTER 26 MAC OS X DEVELOPMENT: OBJECTIVE-C 483
C arrays are just blocks of memory with the convenience of a bracket operator and pointer arithmetic.
There is, for example, absolutely no way of knowing how long an array is, given just the
array itself. In Objective-C, use NSArray, which, like NSString, has convenient methods and a
mutable subclass. Beyond this, NSArray uses behind-the-scenes optimizations to use the data
structure most efficient for the length and operations required.