Difference between var->myProperty and var.myPrope

Question

I am new in objective c and I have some doubts. I've seen that you can access to the properties of a class like var->myProperty and like that too variable.myProperty, but I do not know what the difference between the 2. I searched a lot in internet and really have not found a conclusive answer.

Sorry if I have spelling errors, thanks in advance.

Answer 1

look at Pointers in objective-c http://www.drdobbs.com/mobile/pointers-in-objective-c/225700236

Answer 2

The obj->foo syntax accesses the ivar foo of obj whereas obj.foo accesses the property (defined by @property). The main difference is that obj->foo does not use any getters/setters and writes to the ivar directly.

For example, if you defined the property like this

@property (atomic, strong, readonly) SomeClass *foo;

Modern Objective-C compilers will automatically create an ivar _foo and the property foo for you (without the need of declaring the ivar and @synthesizeing the property.

obj.foo will then automatically use the atomic getter and will make the property readonly (ie no setter). Using the ivar syntax obj->_foo, you are reading the property non-atomically(!) and you can even write it (remember, the property is readonly!).

Usually it's very easy: Always use the property syntax, except in init and dealloc, there you use the ivar syntax. Obviously when you are actually implementing a getter or a setter yourself, that's another place to use the ivar syntax. (thanks to @godel9). (Remember: That's a rough guideline, there are other use-cases where you might want direct ivar access).

EDIT: Because of some critique in the comments: It's true that the dot syntax can also be used without declaring something as @property, eg some use array.count instead of [array count] (for NSArray *array). But given that the OP asked about properties vs ivars, that was certainly not asked. Also note that for a given @property ... SomeClass *foo the ivar is not necessarily _foo but that's would be the auto-generated ivar name in recent ObjC compilers (with @synthesize you can map properties to arbitrary ivars).

Answer 3

There are three cases to consider:

• use of someObject.something

• use of self->something

• use of otherObject->something

someObject.something is the dot syntax. It is exactly equivalent to [someObject something] in terms of behavior. It is a method call. Note that something does not have to be declared via an @property. That is, someArray.count or someString.length are both syntactically valid.

self->something is accessing an ivar directly. It is a very rarely used syntax; rare is in pretty much never. Instead, just access the ivar directly using something = or [something doSomething]. No need for the ->.

otherObject->something is grubbing around otherObject's instance variables directly. Bad programmer. No donut. Don't do that. It breaks encapsulation and leads to extremely fragile, hard to maintain, code.

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A note on @property declarations. If you have:

 @property (atomic, strong, readonly) SomeClass *foo;

And if you let the compiler automatically @synthesize everything, it will create an instance variable named _foo.

You should use direct access in your init and dealloc methods, but -- typically, though not always -- use the setter/getter everywhere else. I.e. in your init you would do _foo = [SomeClass someClassWithSomeMagicValue:42] (assumes ARC, so no retain needed). Everywhere else, you would do [[self foo] castMagic];.