Objective-C - Programming language

Objective-C is a programming language created in 1984 by Brad Cox.

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Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. It was the main programming language used by Apple for the OS X and iOS operating systems, and their respective application programming interfaces (APIs) Cocoa and Cocoa Touch prior to the introduction of Swift. The programming language Objective-C was originally developed in the early 1980s. Read more on Wikipedia...

Tags: programming language
There are at least 535,667 Objective-C repos on GitHub
Objective-C is a superset of C
Early development of Objective-C happened in Apple
The Google BigQuery Public Dataset GitHub snapshot shows 97k users using Objective-C in 167k repos on GitHub
Check out the 445 Objective-C meetup groups on Meetup.com.
There are 6,609 members in the Objective-C subreddit
There are 60 Project Euler users using Objective-C
In the 2021 StackOverflow developer survey Objective-C programmers reported a median salary of $64,859. 3% of respondents reported using Objective-C. 2,310 programmers reported using Objective-C, and 1,400 said they wanted to use it
Explore Objective-C snippets on Rosetta Code
Objective-C is supported by the GDB
Objective-C on HOPL
Objective-C ranks #19 in the TIOBE Index
Objective-C Ubuntu package
ANTLR grammar for Objective-C
Monaco package for syntax highlighting Objective-C
Pygments supports syntax highlighting for Objective-C
GitHub supports syntax highlighting for Objective-C
Objective-C appears in the Quine Relay project
Learn Objective-C on exercism.
There is a central package repository for Objective-C
Indeed.com has 4,276 matches for "objective-c engineer".
See also: (16 related languages) C, Smalltalk, Groovy, Java, Nu, Objective-J, TOM object-oriented, Swift, iOS, Simula, Ada, Self, Ruby, LLVM IR, Linux, Vala
58 PLDB concepts link to Objective-C: Ace Editor, Bazel, BlitzMax, blockml, CIR, cloc, cooC, DRAKON, dreamlisp, eC, Eiffel, F-Script, Felix, FFmpeg, fish, Flow9, Flutter, GCC, GHC, Go, Gradle, gravity, Gun, hashlink, Haxe, HHVM, ImHex, invokator, Iterm2, Java, Julia, Kotlin, lobster, LWJGL, mal, Matplotlib, MongoDB, MonkeyX, NCSA Mosaic, NCAR Command Language, Nim, OpenCV, Pygments, Python, PyTorch, React Native, Revolution, score, sile, Swift, tamgu, tbox-lib, TensorFlow, V, VLC, Wonkey, WorldWideWeb Browser, Zig

Example from Riju:

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

int main() {
  NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
  NSLog(@"Hello, world!");
  [pool drain];
  return 0;
}

Example from hello-world:

/*
 Build on OS X:
 clang -framework Foundation -fobjc-arc objc.m -o objc
 
 Build on Linux with GNUstep:
 clang `gnustep-config --objc-flags` `gnustep-config --base-libs` -fobjc-nonfragile-abi -fobjc-arc objc.m -o objc
 */

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

int main(void)
{
    NSLog(@"Hello World");
}

Example from the Hello World Collection:

/* Hello World in Objective-C.
** Since the standard implementation is identical to K&R C,
** a version that says hello to a set of people passed on
** the command line is shown here.
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <objpak.h>
int main(int argc,char **argv)
{
    id set = [Set new];
    argv++;while (--argc) [set add:[String str:*argv++]];
    [set do:{ :each | printf("hello, %s!\n",[each str]); }];
    return 0;
}

Example from Linguist:

#import "Foo.h"


@implementation Foo

@end

Example from Wikipedia:

-(void) firstLabel: (int)param1 secondLabel: (int)param2;

Objective-C Keywords

auto break case char const continue default do double else enum extern float for goto if inline int long register restrict return short signed sizeof static struct switch typedef union unsigned void volatile while _Bool _Complex _Imaginary BOOL Class bycopy byref id IMP in inout nil NO NULL oneway out Protocol SEL self Super YES @ @interface @end @implementation @protocol @class @public @protected @private @property @try @throw @catch() @finally @synthesize @dynamic @selector atomic nonatomic retain

Language features

Feature	Supported	Example	Token
Standard Library	✓	NSLog(@"Hello, World!");
Explicit Standard Library	✓	#include
Conditionals	✓
Switch Statements	✓
Constants	✓
While Loops	✓
MultiLine Comments	✓	/* A comment */	/* */
Print() Debugging	✓		printf
Comments	✓	// A comment
Message Passing	✓
Line Comments	✓	// A comment	//
Interfaces	✓	@protocol Printing -(void) print; @end
File Imports	✓	// #import ensures that a file is only ever included once so that you never have a problem with recursive includes. #import #include #include
Constructors	✓
Pointers	✓
Single Dispatch	✓
Strings	✓	"hello world"	"
Case Insensitive Identifiers	X
Semantic Indentation	X
Operator Overloading	X
Garbage Collection	X