---
title: OSSymbol
framework: driverkit
role: symbol
role_heading: Type Alias
path: driverkit/ossymbol
---

# OSSymbol

A container for managing an array of characters.

## Declaration

```occ
typedef OSString OSSymbol;
```

## Discussion

Discussion OSString is a container class for managing arrays of characters. Encodings OSString makes no provisions for different character encodings and assumes that a string is a nul-terminated sequence of single-byte characters. User-space code must either assume an encoding (typically ASCII or UTF-8) or determine it in some other way (such as an IORegistryEntry property). OSString is immutable.

## See Also

### Registry data types

- [OSArray](driverkit/osarray.md)
- [OSDictionary](driverkit/osdictionary.md)
- [OSBoolean](driverkit/osboolean.md)
- [OSData](driverkit/osdata.md)
- [OSNumber](driverkit/osnumber.md)
- [OSString](driverkit/osstring.md)
- [OSSerialization](driverkit/osserialization.md)
- [OSCollection](driverkit/oscollection.md)
- [OSContainer](driverkit/oscontainer.md)
- [OSObject](driverkit/osobject.md)
- [IOFixed](driverkit/iofixed.md)