[nufferkay]

I'm a bit confused as to the purpose of this class.

When is it better to use NSNumber instead of int or float or whatever?

Are there times when it is better to just use the C types? (i.e. int, float, etc).

Can anyone please clarify this?

thanks,
-N

[Catfish_Man]

it's darn useful for converting NSStrings to int/float/bool and vice versa. As in,


NSLog([[NSNumber numberWithInt:myValue]stringValue); //logs a C value

[Uncle Skeleton]

I'd been using [NSString stringWithFormat:] for that...

anyway, the real need for NSNumber is for storing numbers in other objects (like NSArray, NSDictionary, NSUserDefaults, etc) that only take NSObjects as input

[nufferkay]

Aha - that's very useful indeed!

But then there's the frustration of comparing the value of an NSNumber to a constant (i.e. it's so much more darn complex than "if (i > 0)" b/c you have to either load the constant into an NSNumber or extract a C type from the variable)....

So should one generally use NSNumber rather than C types for instance variables? Or is there a rule of thumb for deciding these things?

[K++]

When to use NSNumber:

1) Directly manipulating numbers that need to also be onscreen in some sort of collection class.
For example, if you have an NSTableView that shows people with thier names, heights and ages, you might be able to get away with a string as height, but the age would have to be a number, and the Cocoa collection classes require NSObjects. Also if you made the height a NSNumber than you could use an NSFormatter to format the height in a meaningful way.

2) The NSNumber is of actual value to you outside of your class for more than trivial comparisons.
The datasource mentioned in the previous example is one case where you actually need to maintain an actual instance an NSNumber, another is when using methods that require them. I can't think of any off the top of my head unfortunately but there are some that perform operations solely on NSNumbers.

3) Memory
No, NSNumbers aren't a smaller memory footprint than a basic int, float, or double, however when you have a View Object that needs NSNumbers it is more efficient to retain your own than to make temporary ones of your primitives each time one is requested.

[nufferkay]

Thanks for the help, everyone - I think it makes more sense to me now.

-N

[Rickster]

Also, the NSDecimalNumber class can sometimes be useful for doing arithmetic operations on numbers that can't be represented by primitive data types, such as really large integers.