Well, as colon is kind of special symbol, but is part of method signature, it is possible to exted the NSString with category to add this non-idiomatic style of string concatenation:

[@"This " : @"feels " : @"almost like " : @"concatenation with operators"]; 

You can define as many colon separated arguments as you find useful... ;-)

For a good measure, I've also added concat: with variable arguments that takes nil terminated list of strings.

// NSString+Concatenation.h #import <Foundation/Foundation.h> @interface NSString (Concatenation) - (NSString *):(NSString *)a; - (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b; - (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b :(NSString *)c; - (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b :(NSString *)c :(NSString *)d; - (NSString *)concat:(NSString *)strings, ...; @end // NSString+Concatenation.m #import "NSString+Concatenation.h" @implementation NSString (Concatenation) - (NSString *):(NSString *)a { return [self stringByAppendingString:a];} - (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b { return [[self:a]:b];} - (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b :(NSString *)c { return [[[self:a]:b]:c]; } - (NSString *):(NSString *)a :(NSString *)b :(NSString *)c :(NSString *)d { return [[[[self:a]:b]:c]:d];} - (NSString *)concat:(NSString *)strings, ... { va_list args; va_start(args, strings); NSString *s; NSString *con = [self stringByAppendingString:strings]; while((s = va_arg(args, NSString *))) con = [con stringByAppendingString:s]; va_end(args); return con; } @end // NSString+ConcatenationTest.h #import <SenTestingKit/SenTestingKit.h> #import "NSString+Concatenation.h" @interface NSString_ConcatenationTest : SenTestCase @end // NSString+ConcatenationTest.m #import "NSString+ConcatenationTest.h" @implementation NSString_ConcatenationTest - (void)testSimpleConcatenation { STAssertEqualObjects([@"a":@"b"], @"ab", nil); STAssertEqualObjects([@"a":@"b":@"c"], @"abc", nil); STAssertEqualObjects([@"a":@"b":@"c":@"d"], @"abcd", nil); STAssertEqualObjects([@"a":@"b":@"c":@"d":@"e"], @"abcde", nil); STAssertEqualObjects([@"this " : @"is " : @"string " : @"concatenation"], @"this is string concatenation", nil); } - (void)testVarArgConcatenation { NSString *concatenation = [@"a" concat:@"b", nil]; STAssertEqualObjects(concatenation, @"ab", nil); concatenation = [concatenation concat:@"c", @"d", concatenation, nil]; STAssertEqualObjects(concatenation, @"abcdab", nil); }