Objective-C class -> string like: [NSArray className] -> @"NSArray"

Here's a different way to do it with slightly less typing:

NSString *name = [NSArray description];

Consider this alternative:

const char *name = class_getName(cls);

It's much faster, since it doesn't have to alloc NSString object and convert ASCII to whatever NSString representation is. That's how NSStringFromClass() is implemented.

NSString *name = NSStringFromClass ([NSArray class]);

You can even go back the other way:

Class arrayClass = NSClassFromString (name);
id anInstance = [[arrayClass alloc] init];