Question

I’ve created a Constants.h file with a list of:

#define kw00 @"foo" 
#define kw01 @"bar"
...

I also use #import Constants.h in the .h. Using newQuote method, I’m trying to randomly select one of the kw strings, but am having difficulty discovering how to call a reference to a constant that is defined within the string kwString.

-(IBAction)newQuote 
{
    int rNumber = arc4random() % kwTotal;
    (rNumber <9) 
    {
        NSString *kwString = [@"kw0" stringByAppendingString:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", rNumber]];   
    }
}

Thoughts and suggestions would be most appreciated.

Answer 1

It simply isn’t possible to access things this way. Those “constants” don’t even exist at runtime, or when the compiler sees your code — they’re translated by the preprocessor into literal strings.

You should instead create an array, and then you can just get the element at a given index.

(In general, any time you’re naming things with sequential numbers on the end, the answer to any problems you might have is “Use an array.”)