Question

I am curious how I might override the description method that is used when you do the following (see below) for an object. I basically want to better format the output, but am unsure about how I might go about setting this up.

NSLog(@"ARRAY: %@", myArray);

many thanks

EDIT_001

Although subclassing NSArray would have worked I instead decided that I would add a category to NSArray (having not used one before) Here is what I added …

// ------------------------------------------------------------------- **
// CATAGORY: NSArray
// ------------------------------------------------------------------- **
@interface NSArray (displayNSArray)
    -(NSString*)display;
@end

@implementation NSArray (displayNSArray)
-(NSString*)display {
    id eachIndex;
    NSMutableString *outString = [[[NSMutableString alloc] init] autorelease];
    [outString appendString:@"("];
    for(eachIndex in self) {
        [outString appendString:[eachIndex description]];
        [outString appendString:@" "];
    }
    [outString insertString:@")" atIndex:[outString length]-1];
    return(outString);
}
@end

gary

Answer 1

If you’re doing this a lot, the easiest way to reformat the display of your array would be to add a new prettyPrint category to the NSArray class.

@interface NSArray ( PrettyPrintNSArray )
- (NSSTring *)prettyPrint;
@end

@implementation NSArray ( PrettyPrintNSArray )
- (NSString *)prettyPrint {
    NSMutableString *outputString = [[NSMutableString alloc] init];
    for( id item in self ) {
        [outputString appendString:[item description]];
    }
    return outputString;
}
@end

Obviously you’d need to alter the for loop to get the formatting the way you want it.