Style: Dot notation vs. message notation in Objective-C 2.0

Posted by groundhog on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by groundhog
Published on 2009-08-08T17:14:15Z Indexed on 2010/04/06 23:13 UTC
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objective-c

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objective-c-2.0

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subjective

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coding-style

In Objective-C 2.0 we got the "dot" notation for properties. I've seen various back and forths about the merits of dot notation vs. message notation. To keep the responses untainted I'm not going to respond either way in the question.

What is your thought about dot notation vs. message notation for property accessing?

Please try to keep it focused on Objective-C - my one bias I'll put forth is that Objective-C is Objective-C, so your preference that it be like Java or JavaScript aren't valid.

Valid commentary is to do with technical issues (operation ordering, cast precedence, performance, etc), clarity (structure vs. object nature, both pro and con!), succinctness, etc.

Note, I'm of the school of rigorous quality and readability in code having worked on huge projects where code convention and quality is paramount (the write once read a thousand times paradigm).

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