NSUInteger vs NSInteger, int vs unsigned, and similar cases

Question

Anyone have the expertise to explain when to use NSUInteger and when to use NSInteger?

I had seen Cocoa methods returning NSInteger even in cases where the returned

Answer 1

By default, an integer is assumed to be signed. In other words the compiler assumes that an integer variable will be called upon to store either a negative or positive number. This limits the extent that the range can reach in either direction. For example, a 32-bit int has a range of 4,294,967,295. In practice, because the value could be positive or negative the range is actually −2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647. If we know that a variable will never be called upon to store a negative value, we can declare it as unsigned, thereby extending the (positive) range to 0 to +4,294,967,295. So i would say, its okay to use NSInteger when you know that you have a restricted output range. I personally use NSUInteger if I needed to return really big positive only numbers