Constant-string-objects.html 6.8 KB

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  69. <h3 class="section">8.5 Constant String Objects</h3>
  70. <p>GNU Objective-C provides constant string objects that are generated
  71. directly by the compiler. You declare a constant string object by
  72. prefixing a C constant string with the character &lsquo;<samp>@</samp>&rsquo;:
  73. </p>
  74. <div class="smallexample">
  75. <pre class="smallexample"> id myString = @&quot;this is a constant string object&quot;;
  76. </pre></div>
  77. <p>The constant string objects are by default instances of the
  78. <code>NXConstantString</code> class which is provided by the GNU Objective-C
  79. runtime. To get the definition of this class you must include the
  80. <samp>objc/NXConstStr.h</samp> header file.
  81. </p>
  82. <p>User defined libraries may want to implement their own constant string
  83. class. To be able to support them, the GNU Objective-C compiler provides
  84. a new command line options <samp>-fconstant-string-class=<var>class-name</var></samp>.
  85. The provided class should adhere to a strict structure, the same
  86. as <code>NXConstantString</code>&rsquo;s structure:
  87. </p>
  88. <div class="smallexample">
  89. <pre class="smallexample">
  90. @interface MyConstantStringClass
  91. {
  92. Class isa;
  93. char *c_string;
  94. unsigned int len;
  95. }
  96. @end
  97. </pre></div>
  98. <p><code>NXConstantString</code> inherits from <code>Object</code>; user class
  99. libraries may choose to inherit the customized constant string class
  100. from a different class than <code>Object</code>. There is no requirement in
  101. the methods the constant string class has to implement, but the final
  102. ivar layout of the class must be the compatible with the given
  103. structure.
  104. </p>
  105. <p>When the compiler creates the statically allocated constant string
  106. object, the <code>c_string</code> field will be filled by the compiler with
  107. the string; the <code>length</code> field will be filled by the compiler with
  108. the string length; the <code>isa</code> pointer will be filled with
  109. <code>NULL</code> by the compiler, and it will later be fixed up automatically
  110. at runtime by the GNU Objective-C runtime library to point to the class
  111. which was set by the <samp>-fconstant-string-class</samp> option when the
  112. object file is loaded (if you wonder how it works behind the scenes, the
  113. name of the class to use, and the list of static objects to fixup, are
  114. stored by the compiler in the object file in a place where the GNU
  115. runtime library will find them at runtime).
  116. </p>
  117. <p>As a result, when a file is compiled with the
  118. <samp>-fconstant-string-class</samp> option, all the constant string objects
  119. will be instances of the class specified as argument to this option. It
  120. is possible to have multiple compilation units referring to different
  121. constant string classes, neither the compiler nor the linker impose any
  122. restrictions in doing this.
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