Chapter 9. Property Lists

<feature><title>In This Chapter</title>

  • Property Lists and their Importance

  • Creating and Editing Property Lists

  • Adding a Menu Command

  • Text Macros

</feature>

Before continuing, we need to consider property lists. A property list is a simple, structured data format that is used throughout Mac OS X. Preference files, configuration files, the Info.plist files that specify bundle properties to the OS, and sometimes even application data files are all applications of the property list format. It’s easy to use and powerful enough to serve as at least the first cut at most data storage problems and is the language of many OS services.

Data Types

A property list consists of one item of data, expressed in one of seven data types. Five ...

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