Question

int age == 3;

if (age == 2)
NSLog(@"2");

if (age == 4)
NSLog(@"4");

if (age == 3)
NSLog(@"3");

I was wondering what’s the point of putting else ifinstead of having three if statements.

for (GameObject *character in listOfGameObjects) {
if (character.myGameObjectType == kPowerUpTypeHealth) { 
                characterHealth = 100.0f;
        } 
     }

This is in the Viking.m file. character and self(viking) both have the instance variable, setter and getter method characterHealth. If I want to make Viking’s health equal to a hundred do I have to write self.characterHealth = 100.0f;to make sure the health isn’t added to character? Or is what I already have fine?

Thank you!

Answer 1

The thing is that if you have 3 if statements, all of those conditions will be checked, since age can only have 1 value, you should use

if (age == 2)  //You need the double equals, to check for equality, if you use one equals it will assign the value and the if statement will always be true.

else if (age == 3)

else if (age == 4)

so after one of those conditions is met, the other conditions will NOT be checked, saving processing time.

Regarding the self, it will work both ways, however if characterHealth is a @property, using self will assing it using the @synthetize setter, so if you have it declared as retain it will increase the retain count by 1, if you assign it without self it wont increase the retain count. Although since you are assigning it a primitive it doesn’t matter in this case, only objects have a retain count.