Is there a difference between an “instance variable” and a “property” in Objective-c?

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A property is a more abstract concept. An instance variable is literally just a storage slot, like a slot in a struct. Normally other objects are never supposed to access them directly. A property, on the other hand, is an attribute of your object that can be accessed (it sounds vague and it’s supposed to). Usually a property will return or set an instance variable, but it could use data from several or none at all. For example:

@interface Person : NSObject {
    NSString *name;
}

    @property(copy) NSString *name;
    @property(copy) NSString *firstName;
    @property(copy) NSString *lastName;
@end

@implementation Person
    @synthesize name;

    - (NSString *)firstName {
        [[name componentsSeparatedByString:@" "] objectAtIndex:0];
    }
    - (NSString *)lastName {
        [[name componentsSeparatedByString:@" "] lastObject];
    }
    - (NSString *)setFirstName:(NSString *)newName {
        NSArray *nameArray = [name componentsSeparatedByString:@" "];
        NSArray *newNameArray [[NSArray arrayWithObjects:newName, nil] arrayByAddingObjectsFromArray:[nameArray subarrayWithRange:NSMakeRange(1, [nameArray size]-1)]];
        self.name = [newNameArray componentsJoinedByString:@" "];
    }
    - (NSString *)setLastName:(NSString *)newName {
        NSArray *nameArray = [name componentsSeparatedByString:@" "];
        NSArray *newNameArray [[nameArray subarrayWithRange:NSMakeRange(0, [nameArray size]-2)] arrayByAddingObjectsFromArray:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:newName, nil]];
        self.name = [newNameArray componentsJoinedByString:@" "];
    }
@end

(Note: The above code is buggy in that it assumes the name already exists and has at least two components (e.g. “Bill Gates” rather than just “Gates”). I felt that fixing those assumptions would make the actual point of the code less clear, so I’m just pointing it out here so nobody innocently repeats those mistakes.)

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