NSLog is a FoundationKit function for printing debug statements to the console. It is defined in NSObjCRuntime.h:
void NSLog(NSString *format, …);
NSLog works basically like:
fprintf(stderr, format_string, args …);
But its format string is a NSString object rather than simple char *, and a timestamp is prepended to the output. You can use it in the predictable ways:
NSLog(@”ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US”); NSLog(@”x = %d, y = %d”, x, y); NSLog(@”%s\t%s\t0x%08x”, “hex”, “value”, 0x1243);
NSLog will also display meaningful values for well known objects as well:
NSLog(@”my ns string = %@”, myNSString); NSLog(@”my dictionary = %@”, myDict); NSLog(@”my image = %@”, myNSImage);
NSLog works in this case by asking each object for a string that describes itself, sending the -description method to the objects. (Note: if an object doesn’t override the description method, you will get the -description implementation inherited from NSObject, which tends to be like <classname : address>. See UsingTheDescriptionMethod
Just to clarify, NSLog understands all the conversion code specifiers that printf and company understand with the addition of ‘@’ which is the conversion code for objects. And remember NSString is an object so don’t try to convert one in NSLog via ‘s’ which is the C string specifier.
The single exception to “all the…specifiers” above seems to be the %.*s specifier many people use to print variable length strings.
NSLog is very nice, but be careful which specifier you use. Consider the following:
int i = 12345; NSLog( @”%@”, i ); // Signal 10 SIGBUS error
NSLog( @”%d”, i );
i (an int) is not an object! So you can’t send description to it (see above)
** True, but you could make it one with NSNumber, if you wanted to, like so. **
NSLog(@”%@”, [NSNumber numberWithInt:i]);
–CharlieMiller
NSLog format specifiers:
%@ Object %d, %i signed int %u unsigned int %f float/double
%x, %X hexadecimal int %o octal int %zu size_t %p pointer %e float/double (in scientific notation) %g float/double (as %f or %e, depending on value) %s C string (bytes) %S C string (unichar) %.*s Pascal string (requires two arguments, pass pstr[0] as the first, pstr+1 as the second) %c character %C unichar
%lld long long %llu unsigned long long %Lf long double
“Object” refers to a Cocoa object (responding to -description) or a Core Foundation object. For more, see man 3 printf. NSLog understands all printf format specifiers as well as %@ and %C.
== Alternatives to NSLog ==
XLog is an alternative if you think the header is too wide or you would like to log the elapsed time from the previous log.
ZNLog http://codebeach.org/code/show/44
LibComponentLogging is a small library for Objective-C applications on Mac OS X and the iPhone OS which provides log levels, log components for identifying different parts of an application, and an active log level for each log component in order to enable/disable logging for certain parts of an application. Additionally, different logging backends are available, e.g. one which writes to a rotating log file, and one which sends log messages to the Apple System Log facility (ASL). See http://0xc0.de/LibComponentLogging for details.
NSLogger (http://github.com/fpillet/NSLogger) is a high performance logging utility which displays traces emitted by client applications running on Mac OS X or iOS (iPhone OS). It replaces your usual NSLog()-based traces and provides powerful additions like display filtering, image and binary logging, traces buffering, timing information, etc. LibComponentLogging above also has a backend to send its logs to the NSLogger viewer.
BTTimeLog is a simple Objective-C class I put together that logs the time used by an application. The output includes a logging level, accumulated and differential times, the class and method that made the call, and a user string with arguments. More at http://steveweller.com/articles/speedup/
See NSLogToFile for redirecting NSLog output.
I modified the example such that i is not equal to 0; in that case (on 32-bit Mac OS X, anyway) NSLog would interpret it as the nil object and would not crash. It’s still bad form, but the example predicts incorrect behavior.
Do not log a string that you’re unsure of its content (for example from the network) as the first argument (format string). Rather, use NSLog(@”%@”, str);