Comments on: Objective-C and the Properties of BOOL http://www.mindsizzlers.com/2010/04/objective-c-and-the-properties-of-bool/ Bringing Ideas to Life Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:36:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Stuart http://www.mindsizzlers.com/2010/04/objective-c-and-the-properties-of-bool/comment-page-1/#comment-1322 Stuart Wed, 10 Nov 2010 16:04:48 +0000 http://www.mindsizzlers.com/?p=405#comment-1322 'Self' is used to access properties for objects through accessors; without the use of 'self' you end up setting an instance variable rather than a property. Because BOOL is essentially a primitive type, 'self' isn't necessary - a BOOL is an instance variable rather than a property. As such, a property declaration is only necessary if access is needed from other objects. Internally, 'self.myBOOL' and 'myBOOL' reduce to the same thing because the accessor for primitive types should simply be 'assign'. Both work as you would expect and because we are dealing with primitives, there's no difference in the outcome between these two forms. I'm not aware of any convention here amongst Objective-C programmers, so my guess is that it comes down to your own preference! ‘Self’ is used to access properties for objects through accessors; without the use of ‘self’ you end up setting an instance variable rather than a property.

Because BOOL is essentially a primitive type, ‘self’ isn’t necessary – a BOOL is an instance variable rather
than a property. As such, a property declaration is only necessary if access is needed from other objects. Internally, ‘self.myBOOL’ and ‘myBOOL’ reduce to the same thing because the accessor for primitive types should simply be ‘assign’.

Both work as you would expect and because we are dealing with primitives, there’s no difference in the outcome between these two forms. I’m not aware of any convention here amongst Objective-C programmers, so my guess is that it comes down to your own preference!

]]> By: Zsolt http://www.mindsizzlers.com/2010/04/objective-c-and-the-properties-of-bool/comment-page-1/#comment-1320 Zsolt Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:11:24 +0000 http://www.mindsizzlers.com/?p=405#comment-1320 Thanks for the quick tutorial Stuart. Would you consider the code below as correctly using BOOL? Would you go through property to set the BOOL var? I need to change the variable both from within the class and from a different class. BOOL gatheringFeaturedDataBool; @property (readwrite, assign) BOOL gatheringFeaturedDataBool; @synthesize gatheringFeaturedDataBool; self.gatheringFeaturedDataBool = NO; if (!self.gatheringFeaturedDataBool) { [self networkCheckAndDecide]; } Thanks! Thanks for the quick tutorial Stuart.
Would you consider the code below as correctly using BOOL?
Would you go through property to set the BOOL var? I need to change the variable both from within the class and from a different class.

BOOL gatheringFeaturedDataBool;
@property (readwrite, assign) BOOL gatheringFeaturedDataBool;

@synthesize gatheringFeaturedDataBool;

self.gatheringFeaturedDataBool = NO;

if (!self.gatheringFeaturedDataBool) {
[self networkCheckAndDecide];
}

Thanks!

]]>