Shortcuts in Objective-C to concatenate NSStrings

Question

Are there any shortcuts to (stringByAppendingString:) string concatenation in Objective-C, or shortcuts for working with NSString in general?

Answer 1

Macro:

// stringConcat(...)
//     A shortcut for concatenating strings (or objects' string representations).
//     Input: Any number of non-nil NSObjects.
//     Output: All arguments concatenated together into a single NSString.

#define stringConcat(...) \
    [@[__VA_ARGS__] componentsJoinedByString:@""]

Test Cases:

- (void)testStringConcat {
    NSString *actual;

    actual = stringConcat(); //might not make sense, but it's still a valid expression.
    STAssertEqualObjects(@"", actual, @"stringConcat");

    actual = stringConcat(@"A");
    STAssertEqualObjects(@"A", actual, @"stringConcat");

    actual = stringConcat(@"A", @"B");
    STAssertEqualObjects(@"AB", actual, @"stringConcat");

    actual = stringConcat(@"A", @"B", @"C");
    STAssertEqualObjects(@"ABC", actual, @"stringConcat");

    // works on all NSObjects (not just strings):
    actual = stringConcat(@1, @" ", @2, @" ", @3);
    STAssertEqualObjects(@"1 2 3", actual, @"stringConcat");
}

---

Alternate macro: (if you wanted to enforce a minimum number of arguments)

// stringConcat(...)
//     A shortcut for concatenating strings (or objects' string representations).
//     Input: Two or more non-nil NSObjects.
//     Output: All arguments concatenated together into a single NSString.

#define stringConcat(str1, str2, ...) \
    [@[ str1, str2, ##__VA_ARGS__] componentsJoinedByString:@""];

Answer 2

How about shortening stringByAppendingString and use a #define:

#define and stringByAppendingString

Thus you would use:

NSString* myString = [@"Hello " and @"world"];

Problem is that it only works for two strings, you're required to wrap additional brackets for more appends:

NSString* myString = [[@"Hello" and: @" world"] and: @" again"];

Answer 3

When dealing with strings often I find it easier to make the source file ObjC++, then I can concatenate std::strings using the second method shown in the question.

std::string stdstr = [nsstr UTF8String];

//easier to read and more portable string manipulation goes here...

NSString* nsstr = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:stdstr.c_str()];

Answer 4

Was trying the following in the lldb pane

[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/%@/%@", three, two, one];

which errors.

instead use alloc and initWithFormat method:

[[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%@/%@/%@", @"three", @"two", @"one"];

Answer 5

Let's imagine that u don't know how many strings there.

NSMutableArray *arrForStrings = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
for (int i=0; i<[allMyStrings count]; i++) {
    NSString *str = [allMyStrings objectAtIndex:i];
    [arrForStrings addObject:str];
}
NSString *readyString = [[arrForStrings mutableCopy] componentsJoinedByString:@", "];

Answer 6

Two answers I can think of... neither is particularly as pleasant as just having a concatenation operator.

First, use an NSMutableString, which has an appendString method, removing some of the need for extra temp strings.

Second, use an NSArray to concatenate via the componentsJoinedByString method.