Question

I have an extremely simple code snippet to get the application support directory of a use. Problem is, it doesn’t work! I get the values in a CFArrayRef (because I want to use C code since I will use this snippet in a C++ application later) and try to get the first string in there using CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(). I convert the returned void* to a char* using a C-style cast and attempt to output it using printf(), but nothing gets outputted! Can anyone explain why? I’ve looked online through the documentation for CFArray and tried to google the issue, but came up with nothing. Any help would be really appreciated!

Code:

#include <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#include <typeinfo>

int main (int argc, const char * argv[])
{
    NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
    CFArrayRef array = \
      (CFArrayRef)NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(
                        NSApplicationSupportDirectory, 
                        NSUserDirectory, 
                        YES);
    char* string = (char*)CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(array, 0);
    printf("string: %s\n", string);
    [pool drain];
}

Answer 1

Why are you converting it to a char*? The resulting array from NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains() contains CFStringRefs, not char*s.

Try using CFShow((CFTypeRef)CFArrayGetValueAtIndex(array, 0));