What exactly is super in Objective-C?

objective-c super objective-c-runtime
dontWatchMyProfile picture dontWatchMyProfile · Jun 22, 2010 · Viewed 27.2k times · Source

As far as I know, it's a pointer to the superclass. It's hard-wired with the superclass, and not dynamically figured out at runtime. Would like to know it more in detail...

Anyone?

Answer

Ben S picture Ben S · Jun 22, 2010

super

Essentially, it allows you to use the implementations of the current class' superclass.

For the gritty details of the Objective-C runtime:

[super message] has the following meaning:

When it encounters a method call, the compiler generates a call to one of the functions objc_msgSend, objc_msgSend_stret, objc_msgSendSuper, or objc_msgSendSuper_stret. Messages sent to an object’s superclass (using the super keyword) are sent using objc_msgSendSuper; other messages are sent using objc_msgSend. Methods that have data structures as return values are sent using objc_msgSendSuper_stret and objc_msgSend_stret.

So yes, it is static, and not determined at runtime.

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