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

Well, as colon is kind of special symbol, but is part of method signature, it is possible to exted the NSString with category to add this non-idiomatic style of string concatenation:

[@"This " : @"feels " : @"almost like " : @"concatenation with operators"];

You can define as many colon separated arguments as you find useful... ;-)

For a good measure, I've also added concat: with variable arguments that takes nil terminated list of strings.

//  NSString+Concatenation.h

#import 

@interface NSString (Concatenation)

- (NSString *):(NSString *)a;
- (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b;
- (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b :(NSString *)c;
- (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b :(NSString *)c :(NSString *)d;

- (NSString *)concat:(NSString *)strings, ...;

@end

//  NSString+Concatenation.m

#import "NSString+Concatenation.h"

@implementation NSString (Concatenation)

- (NSString *):(NSString *)a { return [self stringByAppendingString:a];}
- (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b { return [[self:a]:b];}
- (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b :(NSString *)c
    { return [[[self:a]:b]:c]; }
- (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b :(NSString *)c :(NSString *)d
    { return [[[[self:a]:b]:c]:d];}

- (NSString *)concat:(NSString *)strings, ...
{
    va_list args;
    va_start(args, strings);

    NSString *s;    
    NSString *con = [self stringByAppendingString:strings];

    while((s = va_arg(args, NSString *))) 
        con = [con stringByAppendingString:s];

    va_end(args);
    return con;
}
@end

//  NSString+ConcatenationTest.h

#import 
#import "NSString+Concatenation.h"

@interface NSString_ConcatenationTest : SenTestCase

@end

//  NSString+ConcatenationTest.m

#import "NSString+ConcatenationTest.h"

@implementation NSString_ConcatenationTest

- (void)testSimpleConcatenation 
{
    STAssertEqualObjects([@"a":@"b"], @"ab", nil);
    STAssertEqualObjects([@"a":@"b":@"c"], @"abc", nil);
    STAssertEqualObjects([@"a":@"b":@"c":@"d"], @"abcd", nil);
    STAssertEqualObjects([@"a":@"b":@"c":@"d":@"e"], @"abcde", nil);
    STAssertEqualObjects([@"this " : @"is " : @"string " : @"concatenation"],
     @"this is string concatenation", nil);
}

- (void)testVarArgConcatenation 
{
    NSString *concatenation = [@"a" concat:@"b", nil];
    STAssertEqualObjects(concatenation, @"ab", nil);

    concatenation = [concatenation concat:@"c", @"d", concatenation, nil];
    STAssertEqualObjects(concatenation, @"abcdab", nil);
}