Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iOS What is the logic of "no label" for 1st argument of a function

V

Vishwas Gagrani

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Curious to know, if there is any logic behind the syntactical structure, where 1st argument is not labelled, but following arguments only need labelling ?


Code: 
[myObject myFunction:firstArgument theSecondArgument:secondArgument];


Or is it just how it is made. There is no logic. ?
 
Typically if you were to create a method signature it would be something that would label the first argument itself. This can be seen with almost any of apples method signatures.

Code: 
UITableViewCell *cell = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:kCELL_IDENTIFIER];

We can see that the first argument is prefixed with with initWithStyle thus labeling the first argument as a style and telling us that the function call is an init function.

Another such example in MKMapKit, imagine _mapView is an MKMapView reference.

Code: 
[_mapView convertCoordinate:coordinate toPointToView:self.view];

We are converting a coordinate to a specific view that is provided by the first argument.

The logic behind the naming is to be descriptive that is the nature of Objective-C.
 
ok, thnx for explanation.

However, when i think something like this :
Code: 
[ mathObj addTheNumbers:number0  number1:number1 ]

it looks to me awkward. But may be it's just a matter of practice. 🙂
 
ArtOfWarfare said:
Shouldn't that be a class method instead of an instance method?
Click to expand...

Honestly something as trivial as adding numbers should be a function not even a method of a class or object. Whether it be a static or instance class.

In that case it would be:
Code: 
int add(int x, int y)
{
     return x + y;
}

With usage of:
Code: 
int result;
result = add(10, 20);

I think the original poster was simply asking about naming convention used for objective-c methods regardless or static or instance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back