Question

Is it possible to get the name of a class into a string like this:

NSString *kls = (NSString *)[self.name class];
NSLog(@"%@", [kls isKindOfClass:[NSString class]] ? @"YES" : @"NO");

I can do: NSString *kls = [[[NSString alloc]initWithFormat:@"%@", [self.name class]]autorelease];

but that seems a bit long-winded to me.
It’s not for any task in particular, I’m just trying to learn more about the language as I go.

Answer 1

On the Mac, provided your object inherits from the NSObject class rather than just implementing the NSObject protocol (the latter situation seems sort of unlikely), you should be able to call:

NSString* str = [anObject className];

className is defined in connection with Mac scripting support, so it is not available on the iOS version of NSObject. In that case, you can probably do something like this:

NSString* str = [[anObject class] description];

(I have only actually tried this on a Mac, though, so it’s possible it may not work correctly on an iOS device.)