Weird objective-c syntax - square brackets and @ sign

Question

I\'m using GHSidebarNav in one of my projects and I came across this code allocating an array of objects. I just have no idea what its doing. Is it just an array? What is th

Answer 1

That's a new objective C literal that is declaring a multi dimensional array.

It's replacing [NSArray arrayWithObjects:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:...], [NSArray arrayWithObjects:..]]];

Answer 2

These are array literals, a type of container literal, available in Xcode 4.4 and later.

See:

• "Literal syntax" section of the discussion of arrays in the Programming with Objective C
• Objective-C Literals discussion at the LLVM site
• WWDC 2012 Modern Objective-C, about 19-20 minutes into it
• WWDC 2012 Migrating to Modern Objective-C