Xcode intellisense meaning of letters in colored boxes like f,T,C,M,P,C,K,# etc

Question

Recently, I have started using Xcode 4 for developing iOS apps.

In Xcode intellisense's autocomplete box, there are some letters in colored boxes before every suggestion. I know that they represent the property of the word we are typing like f,T,C,M,P,C,K,# etc.

Is there some kind of glossary available to find their quick meanings?

Meanings of f,C,T,# are understandable (function, class etc) but there are many others which I dont know. I assume these letters are standard across all IDEs like Visual Studio, Netbeans etc. Correct me if I am wrong.

Please suggest.

Jolenejolenta

Xcode... the official apple's editor with 2.9 stars :) – Gonyea

Answer 1

In Xcode this is called "Code Sense". And these icons also exist in Xcode 3. These icons are also used in symbol navigation.

Red: macros

• = macro (think #define)

Brown: Core Data / namespace

• = modeled class
• = modeled method

• = modeled property

• = C++ namespace

Orange: aliased types

• = Objective-C category
• = enum
• = typedef / typealias
• = Swift extension

Green: variables

• = binding
• = function
• = field
• = constant
• = local variable
• = IBOutlet
• = variable (can be ivar, global var, local var, etc.)
• = parameter (think f(x))

Blue: methods

• = IBAction
• = method
• = property

Purple: aggregate types

• = class (Objective-C, Swift or C++)
• = class extension
• = Objective-C/Swift protocol
• = struct
• = union

Gray: snippets

• = snippets

Icons: #pragma mark or comments

• = !!!: ...
• = FIXME: ...
• = ???: ...
• = TODO: ...
• = MARK: ...

You should be able to look up the meanings from the filenames from /Developer/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DVTFoundation.framework/Resources/Xcode.SourceCodeSymbolKind.*.Icon.tiff*.

In later versions of Xcode, the path is moved to /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/SharedFrameworks/DVTFoundation.framework/Resources/Assets.car, see Analysing Assets.car file in IOS on how to extract the images from the *.car

Grisby

Nice, but more nice if you could put the icons and the explanation together. – Odont

Can you explain what "modeled" means in the context of "modeled class/method/property"? – Helsinki

The icons are now stored in /Applications/Xcode.app//Contents/SharedFrameworks/DVTFoundation.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Assets.car. You can extract the contents of this file using cartool. – Buffybuford

Can we make any custom icons for something? – Tootsie

is the link has changed? – Ardenardency

They seemed to have moved again in Xcode 13 beta. I haven't been able to find their new location. The closest I could find was /Applications/Xcode-beta.app/Contents/SharedFrameworks/DVTUserInterfaceKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Assets.car, but I don't see any of these icons using AssetCatalogTinkerer – Waldron

/Users/Alex/Desktop/plists/DVTSymbolIcons.dvticonspecsc is a PLIST that defines a bunch of icons programmatically. I think they're using this to generate these symbols on-the-fly. – Waldron

You should add blue I initializer to this list – Sylvie

Answer 2

I was searching for the meaning behind the "rM" icon. I finally found the answer (many thanks to kennytm):

The "rM" symbol represents a recursive method.

Zetta