CFString is the CoreFoundation version of NSString, and is used in much the same way. Like many other basic CoreFoundation types, CFString is toll-free bridged with NSString, which means that you can safely cast a CFStringRef to an NSString * and vice versa.

Simple examples of calling various CFString functions can be found at http://www.carbondev.com/site/?page=CFString —- Panther provides two functions for escaping and unescaping XML and HTML entities:

*CFStringRef CFXMLCreateStringByEscapingEntities(CFAllocatorRef allocator, CFStringRef string, CFDictionaryRef entitiesDictionary) *CFStringRef CFXMLCreateStringByUnescapingEntities(CFAllocatorRef allocator, CFStringRef string, CFDictionaryRef entitiesDictionary)

Unfortunately, CFXMLCreateStringByEscapingEntities is buggy, as described at http://www.cocoabuilder.com/archive/message/cocoa/2004/11/2/120728 .

To verify one of the bugs, run this code:

NSString* a = @”one < two”; NSString* b = (NSString*)CFXMLCreateStringByEscapingEntities(kCFAllocatorDefault, (CFStringRef)a, NULL ); NSLog( @”String "%@" became "%@"”, a, b );

In Panther this yields

2005-04-12 16:39:35.313 testFoundation[561] String “one < two” became “one <”

Note that the final “two” is chopped off.

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On OS X 10.4.2 at least, this particular bug seems to be fixed: String “one < two” became “one < two” I haven’t checked on any other bugs