Question

I am trying to define the equivalent of DateTime.MaxValue (C#) but in Objective C.

I don’t want to keep creating NSDates every time I use it so I wish I had it as const.

The problem, the compiler returns “Initializer element is not constant”

Here is the code

static NSDate* DateTimeMinValue = [NSDateFormatter dateFromString:@”00:00:00.0000000, January 01, 1984″];

I also tried

NSDate* const DateTimeMinValue = [NSDateFormatter dateFromString:@”00:00:00.0000000, January 01, 1984″];

Also, what would the difference between the static and const be?

Answer 1

While this is not the exact answer to your question it still might help you.

Did you ever read or hear about

[NSDate distantPast];
[NSDate distantFuture];

they return

An NSDate object representing a date in the distant future (in terms of centuries).

They come in quite handy when you have to compare dates to well a distant Date.