Contents

NSMutableCopying

A protocol that mutable objects adopt to provide functional copies of themselves.

Declaration

protocol NSMutableCopying

Overview

The NSMutableCopying protocol declares a method for providing mutable copies of an object. Only classes that define an “immutable vs. mutable” distinction should adopt this protocol. Classes that don’t define such a distinction should adopt NSCopying instead.

NSMutableCopying declares one method, mutableCopy(with:), but mutable copying is commonly invoked with the convenience method mutableCopy(). The mutableCopy() method is defined for all NSObjects and simply invokes mutableCopy(with:) with the default zone.

If a subclass inherits NSMutableCopying from its superclass and declares additional instance variables, the subclass has to override mutableCopy(with:) to properly handle its own instance variables, invoking the superclass’s implementation first.

Topics

Copying

See Also

Copying