NSMutableArray addObject: -[__NSArrayI addObject:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance

Question

I have tried to initialize my NSMutableArray 100 ways from Sunday, and NOTHING is working for me. I tried setting it equal to a newly allocated and initialized NSMutableArra

Answer 1

The error came about as a result of attempting to add an object to an NSMutableArray type that was actually pointing to an NSArray object. This type of scenario is shown in some demo code below:

NSString *test = @"test";
NSMutableArray *mutableArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
[mutableArray addObject:test];
NSArray *immutableArray = [[NSArray alloc] init];
mutableArray = immutableArray;
[mutableArray addObject:test]; // Exception: unrecognized selector

From the above code, it is easy to see that a subclass type is being assigned to a superclass type. In Java, for instance, this would immediately have been flagged as an error (conversion error between types), and the problem resolved fairly quickly. To be fair to Objective-C, a warning is given when attempting to perform an incompatible assignment, however, this simply just does not seem to be enough sometimes and the result can be a real pain for developers. Fortunately, this time around, it was not myself who bore most of this pain :P

Answer 2

Have some indexes (into a data array elsewhere) and wanted to have them in numerical order (for a good reason). Crashing until added mutableCopy at the end. Totally puzzled, until I recalled that using Objective-C literal @[] returns a non-mutable array.

NSMutableArray *a = [@[@(self.indexA), @(self.indexB)] mutableCopy];
NSLog(@"%@", a);
[indexArray sortUsingComparator: ^(NSNumber *obj1, NSNumber *obj2) {
    return [obj1 compare:obj2];
}];
NSLog(@"%@", a);

Thanx, Zak!

Answer 3

I got bitten by this exception for a typo I've made, maybe it'll save someone 5 min. of their time:

I wrote:

NSMutableArray *names = [NSArray array];

instead of:

NSMutableArray *names = [NSMutableArray array];

The compiler has no problem with that because NSMutableArray is also an NSArray, but it crashes when trying to add an object.