What is nil?

Discussion in 'iOS Programming' started by Red87445, Jul 27, 2011.

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  1. Red87445, Jul 27, 2011

    Red87445 macrumors newbie

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    #1
    Objective-C is my first programming language, so I am not familiar with nils or nulls and such. In my book the code created "id action", and assigned it equal to nil. After that there was a switch case where action gets assigned a value. I was just wondering why action was set to nil? Is it just something you do with ids?

    Thank you!
     
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  2. jiminaus, Jul 27, 2011

    jiminaus macrumors 65816

    jiminaus

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    #2
    An id variable is a pointer to an Objective-C object. nil is the value of an id variable that doesn't currently point to any Objective-C object. NULL is similar except NULL has the type void* not id, and is the value of any kind of pointer variable which doesn't current point to anything.

    I think almost always (if not always), nil == NULL == 0.
     
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  3. Mr. Retrofire, Jul 27, 2011

    Mr. Retrofire macrumors 603

    Mr. Retrofire

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    #3
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  4. Sydde, Jul 27, 2011

    Sydde macrumors 68020

    Sydde

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    #4
    You have a poorly written book, designed to lead to later confusion. They should not be defining a variable named "action" of type "id", that is just plain wrong. "action" should really only be used as a property, of type "SEL", a sort of AppKit convention. Get a better book.
     
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  5. Red87445, Jul 29, 2011

    Red87445 thread starter macrumors newbie

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    #5
    thanks!

    Um, thanks too.

    Well, this is a cocos2d book. The reason why I asked a question here and not on the cocos2d forum was because I thought I would get a faster reply, and this wasn't a cocos2d specific question.
     
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