How to encode a unichar array using NSCoding

Question

My custom object contains an array of unichar primitives. However there is no encodeUnichar:ForKey method in NSCoder. My solution is to transform my 2d unichar array into an NSString and then encode that.

However, the absence of a method to encode character makes me feel like I am missing something obvious, especially because I couldn't find the answer on Stack Overflow.

Before I embark on my NSString method, does anyone know if there is a simpler way to do this built in into the NSCoding protocol?

Thanks Lee.

Rob Napier · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-27 14:27:26Z

1

A C array of fixed-size data is best encoded using encodeBytes:length:forKey:. See Encoding and Decoding C Data Types for full details.

answered Jun 27, 2012 at 14:27

Rob Napier

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3 Comments

Nicolas Bachschmidt Over a year ago

This will work great until you try to decode the value on a machine with a different endianess. I know, all Apple machine are little-endian but that may change in the future (it already has).

Nicolas Bachschmidt Over a year ago

You should swap the bytes before coding and after decoding with NSSwapHostShortToLittle and NSSwapLittleShortToHost or (NSSwapHostShortToBig and NSSwapBigShortToHost if you prefer big-endian).

Tangler Over a year ago

This works great as long as you remember that a unichar is 2 bytes long!

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