Question

I like C++ a lot and to be honest the Objective-C “super set” of C is more of a “super fail”. Can an iPhone application be written in pure C++? Are there parts of the API that are unavailable from C++?

Answer 1

You can’t code purely in C++. For one, the UIApplicationDelegate class every application needs to inherit is Objective-C.

However, nothing is stopping you from coding everything that isn’t framework related in Objective-C++. You’ll still need to use the Objective-C calls for UIKit and other frameworks, but all of your application logic can be in C++.

From the Objective-C++ section of the Objective-C programming guide, these are the main limitations:

Objective-C++ does not add C++
features to Objective-C classes, nor
does it add Objective-C features to
C++ classes. For example, you cannot
use Objective-C syntax to call a C++
object, you cannot add constructors or
destructors to an Objective-C object,
and you cannot use the keywords this
and self interchangeably. The class
hierarchies are separate; a C++ class
cannot inherit from an Objective-C
class, and an Objective-C class cannot
inherit from a C++ class. In addition,
multi-language exception handling is
not supported. That is, an exception
thrown in Objective-C code cannot be
caught in C++ code and, conversely, an
exception thrown in C++ code cannot be
caught in Objective-C code. For more
information on exceptions in
Objective-C, see “Exception Handling.”