Vectors in Cocoa Touch / Objective-C

Question

Hi all,

Is it possible to use vectors in Coca Touch? If so, what library must be included?

I was following a general C tutorial on them an the only thing needed was to #include <vector>

But XCode states that there is no such file or directory.

Any pointer to a library that provides such functionality is appreciated.

Regards ~dhp

Answer 1

Objective-C is a superset of C, and therefore anything C will work with them. However, std::vector is a C++ class, which means the compiler has to be aware that you're going to use C, Objective-C and C++ code inside your program. You can do so by changing the extension of your source files from .m to .mm.

However, if you're still at the stage of learning Objective-C or C++, try to not mix too much C++ with it. C++ uses "non-POD types" (POD being "plain old data"), which are inherently incompatible with functions that take variadic arguments; under the hood, all Objective-C calls work that way, so that can make it complex to work with C++ types through Objective-C calls if you're not too sure about how it all works. You could use Cocoa's NSMutableArray class too.