what is this weird code notation mean

Question

what\'s this line mean when using the second NSDictionay beside the message body:

NSDictionary *item = (NSDictionary *) [self.content objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];

Answer 1

This is a cast, as in C.

In your case, "self.content" seems to be an NSArray. So [self.content objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] would be an NSObject. Except that here, for some reason, you know it's an NSDictionary. So you explicitly cast it in order to avoid a compiler warning (that would tell you "hey, you're assigning an NSObject to an NSDictionary variable)

Answer 2

self.content is a property of type NSArray (I guess!)

This line returns you the Object (which seams to be a NSDictionary) at Index indexPath.row. (NSDictionary*) casts the object to NSDictionary.

Answer 3

(NSDictionary *) a type cast. It tells the compiler to assume that the object returned by the objectAtIndex: method is of the type NSDictionary * even though the return type of the method is different.