What format does NSKeyedArchiver save?

Question

When I use NSKeyedArchiver is the data that is written a *.plist, I have seen some examples where people have the output file down as *.txt or even without an extension at all?

-(void)saveCore {
    NSMutableData *data = [[NSMutableData alloc] init];
    NSKeyedArchiver *archiver = [[NSKeyedArchiver alloc] initForWritingWithMutableData:data];
    [archiver encodeObject:reactorCore forKey:@"CORE"];
    [archiver finishEncoding];
    [data writeToFile:[self dataFilePath] atomically:YES];

    [data release];
    [archiver release];
}

gary

Answer 1

You can use any file extension you want. It is completely unrelated to the actual file format NSKeyedArchiver uses. By default, the archive will be in binary form, but if you set the archiver's outputFormat property to NSPropertyListXMLFormat_v1_0, it will write an XML plist. And when you do that, you should probably give your file a .plist or .xml extension.