On Apr 24, 2014, at 10:33 AM, Alex Zavatone <z...@mac.com> wrote:
> I was just asked yesterday if there is any shorthand in Objective-C for "if 
> this thing = nil, then instantiate a new instance from the class"
> 
> Something like this:
> 
> NSString x;
> 
> if ([x isEqualtoString:nil]) {
>    x = @"yo";
> } 

I know this is just for illustrative purposes, but this won't work because 
messages to nil return zero, and so the if-test will always return false.  You 
want:

NSString *x;  // Added missing "*" :).
if (x == nil) {
   x = @"yo";
}

> And we messed around a bit looking for any shorthand and though it looked 
> like a terrible idea since the comparison is done against integers using the 
> ternary operator, I'd like to know exactly why it's a terrible idea.
> 
> NSString x;
> 
> x = (x) ?: @"yo";

That's how I'd do it.  It's equivalent to

x = x ? x : @"yo";  // Note you don't need the parens.

which in turn is equivalent to the if statement above.  It's perfectly okay to 
test a pointer for nil in this way:

<http://c-faq.com/null/ptrtest.html>

We do it all the time, as in

self = [super init];
if (self) {
    ...
}

--Andy

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