[yeslekmc]

I think the answer to this one might be somewhat obvious...

If you're writing a Cocoa application that alters large groups (or blocks) of strings, will performance be better using NSMutableString (and the substring, range, delete and insert methods), or would I be better off converting the NSString data to char[ ] arrays, performing my manipulations, and then converting it back to NSString for final output?

I already have my functions written in C with character arrays, I'm porting them from the Windows environment. The one problem I see with the char[ ] array approach might be UniCode, however at this time I'm not that concerned with anything outside the bounds of standard ASCII characters. (But I might not want to lock my self into this situation either.)

I will be performing thousands of comparisions and replacements within my strings until an end result is achieved. I'd imagine that you would get better performance using raw C structures, but how do most people handle these types of operations when programming in Cocoa/Objective-C ?

[Angus_D]

Obj-C will always have a higher overhead than raw C. you can take a look at the implementations of NSMutableString in CoreFoundation (NSMutableStrings are CFStrings), part of Darwin.

[yeslekmc]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Obj-C will always have a higher overhead than raw C. you can take a look at the implementations of NSMutableString in CoreFoundation (NSMutableStrings are CFStrings), part of Darwin.

Thanks. I'll stick with my char[ ] arrays then. I'm probably going to regret it later (because of UniCode), but I'll cross that bridge when I get there...

[calumr]

Why don't you use unichar arrays? From NSString.h:

Code:
- (void)getCharacters:(unichar *)buffer;
- (void)getCharacters:(unichar *)buffer range:(NSRange)aRange;

[yeslekmc]

Originally posted by calumr:
Why don't you use unichar arrays? From NSString.h:

Well... Uhhh....

Until you mentioned it I didn't even know they existed. Are they 16-bit versions of the old 8-bit char data type? I'll have to check 'em out!

Thanks!