What is this Objective-C syntax, ellipse style dot notation? “…”

Question

I noticed this in Joe Hewitt\'s source for Three20 and I\'ve never seen this particular syntax in Objective-C before. Not even sure how to reference it in an appropriate Google

Answer 1

It's a variadic method, meaning it takes a variable number of arguments. This page has a good demonstration of how to use it:

#import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h>

@interface NSMutableArray (variadicMethodExample)

- (void) appendObjects:(id) firstObject, ...;  // This method takes a nil-terminated list of objects.

@end

@implementation NSMutableArray (variadicMethodExample)

- (void) appendObjects:(id) firstObject, ...
{
id eachObject;
va_list argumentList;
if (firstObject)                      // The first argument isn't part of the varargs list,
  {                                   // so we'll handle it separately.
  [self addObject: firstObject];
  va_start(argumentList, firstObject);          // Start scanning for arguments after firstObject.
  while (eachObject = va_arg(argumentList, id)) // As many times as we can get an argument of type "id"
    [self addObject: eachObject];               // that isn't nil, add it to self's contents.
  va_end(argumentList);
  }
}