UITextView textView:shouldChangeTextInRange:replacementText: doesn't fire when deleting large portions of text?

Question

I am trying to implement a character counter for a UITextView, but have found the counter to be inaccurate in the following situation:

• Enter a few characters of text, such as "The"
• Tap return 25 times
• Hold down the delete button to delete the text (and hold it down until the cursor gets to the top)
• When the cursor reaches the top (and after deleting "The"), the counter still says the UITextView contains 3 characters
• Tap the delete button once more to have the count correct itself and say there are 0 characters

I've outputted the results of the counter and the replacementText in this situation and the last output is as follows:

2009-08-06 15:29:14.357 Characters: 3
2009-08-06 15:29:14.369 The

Therefore, it appears that when a large number of newlines (and perhaps large portions of text in general) are deleted en masse in this manner, textView:shouldChangeTextInRange:replacementText: is not fired at the end of that sequence, requiring the addition tap of the delete button.

My counter code is as follows:

- (BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range replacementText:(NSString *)text {
    NSString* nextText = [textView.text stringByReplacingCharactersInRange:range withString:text];
    int characterCount = [nextText length];

Any ideas on how to overcome this so the count is correct in this situation (or what I may be doing wrong)?

Answer 1

I still don't know about the issue with textView:shouldChangeTextInRange:replacementText: not being called, but I just discovered that putting my counter code in textViewDidChange: (which is a more logical place for that code) works as expected.