What is the difference?

[Bugsy]

Hi all

A simple question from newbie to IOS programming.
Been making my first hello world program and found two examples on how to set data in a cell.

What is the difference between
[cell.textLabel setText:@"Hello World!"];
and
cell.textLabel.text = @"Hello World!";

I know this is obvious for most of you but please share.
The latter seems like not calling a setter but setting the property directly ?
(i come from c/java land)

Regards
Bugsy

[BrianSlick]

There is no difference. The first is bracket syntax, the second is dot syntax. Dot syntax was added to the language in Obj-C 2.0 a few years ago. But they do the same thing.

[Bugsy]

Hi BrianSlick

Thanks for the quick response.

So they are equal, but what about the setText and text difference ?

Regards
Bugsy

[BrianSlick]

They do the same thing.

[Duncan C]

Originally Posted by Bugsy

Hi BrianSlick

Thanks for the quick response.

So they are equal, but what about the setText and text difference ?

Regards
Bugsy

Both of those forms set the value of a property.

Read Brian's article on properties. The link is in his signature.

Properties are declared with the @property command.

When you declare a property, you can make it read-only or read/write. If the property is read/write, you wind up with 2 new methods in your code: a getter and a setter.

The getter is a method that has the same name as the property, and returns a value of that type.

The setter is a method called set<Property_name>, where "set" is prepended to the front of the method name, and the property name (with it's first letter capitalized) is the second part of the method name.

So, for a property "text", the setter method is called setText.

You can invoke a setter by calling it with normal method syntax:

[label setText: @"new value"];

Or using "dot notation", which is new to Objective C 2.0. That looks like this:

label.text = @"new value";

The compiler actually converts the dot notation form to a normal method call, like the first form.