NSLog

NSLog is a FoundationKit function for printing debug statements to the console. It is defined in NSObjCRuntime.h:

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void NSLog(NSString *format, ...);

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NSLog works basically like:

fprintf(stderr, format_string, args ...);

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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:

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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

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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.

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The single exception to "all the...specifiers" above seems to be the %.*s specifier many people use to print variable length strings.

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NSLog is very nice, but be careful which specifier you use. Consider the following:

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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.

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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.

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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);

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