Core Foundation
| Developer(s) | Apple Inc. |
|---|---|
| Type | System library |
| Website | developer |
Core Foundation (also called CF) is a C application programming interface (API) in macOS & iOS, and is a mix of low-level routines and wrapper functions. Apple releases most of it as an open source project called CFLite that can be used to write cross-platform applications for macOS, Linux, and Windows; a third-party open-source implementation called OpenCFLite also exists. Most Core Foundation routines follow a certain naming convention that deal with opaque objects, for example CFDictionaryRef for functions whose names begin with CFDictionary, and these objects are often reference counted (manually) through CFRetain and CFRelease. Internally, Core Foundation forms the base of the types in the Objective-C standard library as well.
The most prevalent use of Core Foundation is for passing its own primitive types for data, including raw bytes, Unicode strings, numbers, calendar dates, and UUIDs, as well as collections such as arrays, sets, and dictionaries, to numerous macOS C routines, primarily those that are GUI-related. At the operating system level Core Foundation also provides standardized application preferences management through CFPropertyList, bundle handling, run loops, interprocess communication through CFMachPort and CFNotificationCenter, and a basic graphical user interface message dialog through CFUserNotification.
...
Wikipedia