Question

I understand that if you plan on changing the contents of a string object, then you should use NSMutableString. Does this apply to string objects that are instance variables? If I have:

 @property (nonatomic,retain) NSString* map;

Can I change self.map whenever I want and it still be considered just fine? I am actually doing this, but it occurred to me that maybe this doesn’t make sense to do in this way, and that my ivar should be an NSMutableString instead. I am merely doing things like:

self.map=@"Georgia";

/// in another method, later:

self.map=@"Montana";

It works, but technically map is inmutable, so maybe this is not wise?

Answer 1

This is the common way to do it. In my opinion, you don’t need to use mutable strings when you can just replace it. Mutable strings are designed to be ‘content-manipulated’.