objective c - Why is there an NSInteger?

Question

If NSInteger is just like a regular int then why does it exist and what is its purpose in being called NSInteger?

I'm new to Mac OS X programming and we'll be having a report for this.

Answer 1

It's an architecture-safe (64 vs 32 bit) type to support different platforms and implementations of C.

Apple recommends that you use NSInteger over normal types anyway, I would assume for portability!

You can read more at this Foundation Types Reference.

Basic description:

When building 32-bit applications, NSInteger is a 32-bit integer. A 64-bit application treats NSInteger as a 64-bit integer.