Objective-C: my class with static methods “does not implement methodSignatureForSelector: — trouble ahead”

Question

I have a utility class which has only static methods, so it is not inheriting from NSObject (No need right?)

There are no warnings at all when compiling.

The pro

Answer 1

Thanks for the answer!

About the 'static' vs. 'class methods', AFAIK this is just naming, no real difference. Like 'functions/methods' and 'messages'.

However, this is not necessarily 'incorrect' design. First you have to remember that ObjC has no namespacing, so the only way to put some order into things, is a class. Because if two functions' names collide, the compiler will shout loudly. There ARE sometimes some functions that are 'Utility' functions and work on other objects, or do certain calculations, that can't be directly related to a certain object to manage them, and also they shouldn't, because that will just generate unnecessary overhead.

As a very experienced C/C++/Asm/Others prorgammer, when programming in ObjC, I tend to always release memory myself, for performance reasons. For the same reasons, I wouldn't want to generate any overhead where its not needed. And ObjC has a lot of overhead.

The docs also do not say that I MUST inherit from NSObject, it says that I SHOULD when I want it to be correctly managed by the framework.

But as I understand it there's no need for any managing, these functions should be just functions wrapped inside a classname's namespace.

About +initiallize - that can only be overridden if the class inherits from NSObject. So the original question is still there - why should I inherit from NSObject if I do not want any of its services? I do not need to allocate the class or init it, as I have nothing to do with an instance of it!

Also a weird thing in ObjC is that you can override a class method?!