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What does.. NS stand for in NSObject, SF stand for in SFAuthenticationSession and AS stand for in ASWebAuthenticationSession.

I assume there must be some logic behind these acronyms?

Simon Hutton
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    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/473758/what-does-the-ns-prefix-mean, `SF` is for Safari, and `AS` is for Authentication Services. – trndjc Jun 11 '20 at 15:53
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    It works as a cheap form of name spacing when used in Objective-C. Prevents symbol collisions when you import multiple frameworks. – Warren Burton Jun 11 '20 at 16:25
  • I found this https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/sf-symbols/overview/ that implies that for 'SF Symbols' the SF stands for San Francisco! Thanks for being so consistent, Apple :-) – Simon Hutton Jun 12 '20 at 10:40

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AS and SF are both acronyms made from its frameworks, AuthenticationService and SafariServices respectively. The NS acronym stands for NeXTStep. Basically NeXTStep is the technology that early Cocoa was based on.

paulRick
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  • Thanks. That's very helpful. And interesting that the acronym SF stands for Safari Services. So it's not an acronym at all. Apple huh! – Simon Hutton Jun 12 '20 at 10:42
  • Haha true. But it seems that inside Safari Services we have some [class/struct](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/#2191084) that starts with SS. Why? No idea. – paulRick Jun 12 '20 at 16:25