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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-17T16:59:45+00:00

I am working through a book on Cocoa and Objective-C. In the example for

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I am working through a book on Cocoa and Objective-C. In the example for nested method calls:

[NSString stringWithFormat:[prefs format]];

I am assuming that prefs is the return type for the nested method call to format…is this correct ?

Thanks,

Scott

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  1. Editorial Team

    Nope, in that case prefs will be an instance of an object. The return type will be an NSString *, since that’s what stringWithFormat: takes. If it’s part of a wider example then look for a declaration of the ‘prefs’ object. If it’s just a throwaway line then you’ll have to trust me for now. Rest assured: [object message] always sends that message to that object. The return type is defined by the message declaration and is assumed to be ‘id’ if the declaration can’t be found.

    It’s not a particularly safe bit of code, by the way. If the result of [prefs format] contains any formatting characters then NSString will attempt to access things on the call stack that aren’t there.

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