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I'm looking through the source code for the CocoaHTTPServer project, more specifically the HTTPServer.m file and I just don't understand this line:
connectionClass = [HTTPConnection self];
What does this do (is it documented anywhere)? How does it even compile? Should it not be
connectionClass = [HTTPConnection class];
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self is a special variable in Objective-C, inside an instance method this variable refers to the receiver(object) of the message that invoked the method, while in a class method self will indicate which class is calling.
It's Shorthand writing. In Objective-C, any character , numeric or boolean literal prefixed with the '@' character will evaluate to a pointer to an NSNumber object (In this case), initialized with that value. C's type suffixes may be used to control the size of numeric literals.
In this context, - (id)self is a method defined on NSObject. It returns the receiver. For a Class it should obviously do the same as a call to the -(Class)class.
Class objects are thus full-fledged objects that can be dynamically typed, receive messages, and inherit methods from other classes. They’re special only in that they’re created by the compiler.
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