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I have difficulties understanding naming conventions of ARC. I have always coded with ARC, and I guess this is the reason.
1. Class methods
What name should I choose for the following method?
What are the differences, concerning memory management, between theses two names?
This name:
+ (MyObject *)newObjectFrom:(MyObject *)anObject
withOptions:(NSDictionary*)options
{
MyObject * newObject = [anObject copy] ;
[newObject modifyWith:options] ;
return newObject ;
}
or this name ?
+ (MyObject *)objectFrom:(MyObject *)anObject
withOptions:(NSDictionary*)options
{
MyObject * newObject = [anObject copy] ;
[newObject modifyWith:options] ;
return newObject ;
}
2. Instance methods
What name should I choose for the following method?
What are the differences, concerning memory management, between theses two names?
This name:
- (MyObject *)newObjectwithOptions:(NSDictionary*)options
{
MyObject * newObject = [self copy] ;
[newObject modifyWith:options] ;
return newObject ;
}
or this name?
- (MyObject *)objectwithOptions:(NSDictionary*)options
{
MyObject * newObject = [self copy] ;
[newObject modifyWith:options] ;
return newObject ;
}
2. Simple rules for naming methods
Is there a basic, simple rule to follow when naming methods?
By "basic, simple", I mean
a rule similar to "strong when the object belongs to the class", "weak when the object is just referred to by this class, and (thus) owned by another class";
(and/or) a rule that does not refer to the memory management without ARC;
(and/or) a rule that does not use words such as "autorelease", "release".
When Rivera said that method names are not important, he probably followed his experience: It always works. And this is correct. And you are correct that you probably do not understand the role of method names because you has always used ARC. So what is the big deal with it?
I added a synopsis to show the problem with MRR at the end of this answer. As you can see there, you do not have to care about naming rules using ARC the way you had to with MRR.
To give you a more detailed explanation, you have to understand what happens using MRR:
Prior to ARC one had to do memory management manually. Doing so he had to know, what kind of ownership a return value has. To make a long story short, one had to know, whether he has to release a returned object:
Rule 1: You do not own an object returned by a method automatically. If you want to hold it, retain it and release it, when you are done with it.
id object = [[object methodThatReturnsAnObject] retain]; // I want to hold it
…
[object release]; // Done with it
id object = [object methodThatReturnsAnObject]; // I do not want to hold it
…
// I do not release it
Doing a deep analysis you can see that there are sometimes problems. (Object deallocation as a side effect.) But this was the basic approach.
The advantage of that was that a retain-release pair could be handled locally (inside a compound statement) and it was easy to follow the ownership of an object.
Rule 2: But when an object was created the first time this could not work: The sender of the message has always to hold it. Otherwise it would be destroyed immediately (= before the sender has the chance to retain it.) So there was a additional rule:
If the name of a class method that returns an object starts with alloc, init, or new you have to handle the returned object as you did a retain on it. Or in one word: Ownership transfer:
id object = [Class allocOrInitOrNewMethod];
…
[object release];
As -retain took the ownership explicitly, alloc–, init…, new… transferred it implicitly.
All other methods behaves like rule 1.
Rule 3: Sometime you need an autorelease pool.
To make the advantage of ARPs visible think of this code: (It is useless, just to demonstrate the problem
Case 1.1:
Person *person = [[Person alloc] initWithName:…]; // Ownership transfer, release person, when you are done
NSString *name = [person name]; // the name object is hold by the person object only
[person release]; // I do not need the person object any more
[name doSomething]; // Crash: The person was the only object holding the name
Another problem:
Case 2.1:
Person *person = [[Person alloc] initWithName:…]; // Ownership transfer, release person, when you are done
if (…)
{
return; // break, continue, goto
}
…
[person release];
Because the last line is never reached, the object is never released.
You can repair that with autoreleasing methods. An object moved to the ARP lives as long as the control flow returns to the run loop. So it lives through every method, through method return and so on. To do it explicitly:
Case 1.2:
Person *person = [[[Person alloc] initWithName:…] autorelease]; // No ownership transfer, persons belongs to the ARP
NSString *name = [person name]; // the name object is hold by the person object only
[name doSomething]; // No Crash: The person object holding the name object is still alive
Case 2.2:
Person *person = [[[Person alloc] initWithName:…] autorelease]; // No ownership transfer, prsons belongs to the AR.
if (…)
{
return; // break, continue, goto
}
…
// No release necessary.
Because one has to be too lazy to type such a long message chain, convenience allocators has been invented to do this for you:
+ (Person*)personWithName:(NSString*)name
{
return [[[self alloc] initWithName:name] autorelease];
}
With the result:
Case 2.3:
Person *person = [personWithName:…]; // No ownership transfer, persons belongs to the AR.
if (…)
{
return; // break, continue, goto
}
…
// No release necessary.
And you can do the same with getters:
- (NSString*)name
{
return [[_name retain] autorelease];
}
So we at the end of the day we have simple rules:
Rule 1: If you want to keep a returned object in memory retain it – and release it, when you do not need it any more.
Rule 2: If the class method's name starts with alloc, new, or init, think of it as an implicit retain (and therefore release it, when you are done with the object.)
Rule 3: Use -autorelease to delay the deallocation of returned objects for convenience.
Synopsis:
Alloc-init creation
// MRR:
Person *person = [[Person alloc] initWithName:#"Amin"];
…
[person release]; // You create it, you release it
// ARC:
Person *person = [[Person alloc] initWithName:#"Amin"];
…
New creator
// MRR:
Person *person = [[Person newPersonWithName:#"Amin"];
…
[person release]; // You create it, you release it
// ARC:
Person *person = [[Person newPersonWithName:#"Amin"];
…
Convenience allocator
// MRR:
Person *person = [[Person personWithName:#"Amin"]; // Autoreleased
…
// ARC:
Person *person = [[Person personWithName:#"Amin"];
…
As you can see, there is no difference for the three ways of object creation using ARC. So Riviera is right, when he said that this is not important any more. But under the hood the last way is different, because it moves the object to the ARP.
It is the same with the implementation of this methods:
Implementing a new allocator
// MRR
+ (Person*)newPersonWithName:(NSString*)name
{
return [[self alloc] initWithName:name];
}
// ARC
+ (Person*)newPersonWithName:(NSString*)name
{
return [[self alloc] initWithName:name];
}
Implementing a convenience allocator
// MRR
+ (Person*)personWithName:(NSString*)name
{
return [[[self alloc] initWithName:name] autorelease];
}
// ARC
+ (Person*)personWithName:(NSString*)name
{
return [[self alloc] initWithName:name];
}
Again the implementation for both methods is identical using ARC.
-> You do not need it any of this rules any more. ARC cares four you.
Especially you do not need convenience allocators any more, because there is nothing inconvenient any more. (And even they are optimized at run time, there is still a minimal runtime penalty.) I do not implement convenience allocators any more, but new allocators.
But ARC has to be compatible with MRR. So it remembers all that rules. To make your code readable for others you should repeat this rules, too. But, of course, now the implementation of a convenience allocator and a new allocator is bitwise identical – the rest is done by ARC.
Method names are important. The official documentation of how ARC interprets method names can be found in the clang ARC documentation in the section on method families.
Method naming conventions are important when converting the code from MRC to ARC, and when interoperating with MRC code from ARC Code.
Apple guide says that with "ARC code only" the naming conventions are "less important", but this is not 100% true.
For example (and this is only one example, I think that there are many other), look at this project
I swizzled release-autorelease calls to log it, and you can see the difference:
when a method begins with a special naming (for example "new"), ARC returns an object with a retain count of +1, that is balanced by release calls.
When a difference name is used, ARC returns an AUTORELEASED object. (look at the NSLog calls)
This can be a big difference in code that alloc a great number of objects in a loop. In this case, the programmer should create an autorelease pool.
So, it's not true that the naming conventions are less important when using ARC-only code.
I don't know all of the details on naming methods 100% conventionally because there are different situations that apply to each. however I think this article in the Apple docs will help you. https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ProgrammingWithObjectiveC/Conventions/Conventions.html
My experience in the apple world is that factory methods like your examples would usually include 'create' by convention. This is probably less important now with ARC but in the old days 'create' in a method or function signature was a pretty sure fire way to be sure you understood you were taking ownership of the resulting object (owing a release/free() on it) rather than an instance type which you would assume to autorelease [NSArray array] , [UIColor colorWith....] etc, so I still definitely like to follow this convention.
ARC gave semantics to what used to be a naming convention for tracking reference counting responsibilities. So now the compiler uses the same naming patterns to determine whether a method returns a retained object, etc. See the link in #JodyHagens' answer and continue reading with http://clang.llvm.org/docs/AutomaticReferenceCounting.html#semantics-of-method-families
Methods in the alloc, copy, mutableCopy, and new families — that is, methods in all the currently-defined families except init — implicitly return a retained object as if they were annotated with the ns_returns_retained attribute. This can be overridden by annotating the method with either of the ns_returns_autoreleased or ns_returns_not_retained attributes.
The "new family" is the message selectors that start with "new" followed by an upper case letter. So there are memory management differences between newObjectFrom:withOptions: and objectFrom:withOptions:, but you can use an annotation to override that (don't go there), and the compiler should complain if you get it wrong.
(All methods that implement a given message selector had better provide the same reference counting semantics.)
In addition to Apple's article on Conventions that #iRebel_85 points out, Apple has an extensive set of naming guidelines.
Google's style guide adds a few more naming guidelines.
These guidelines are well thought out and useful for making code easier to understand and collaborate on.
First, memory management has nothing to do with the names you choose for your methods or classes. In other words if it compiles and you're not using reserved keywords or critical method names you should be good. (Please refer to Edit note)
As for 1, preceding new is very uncommon in Objective-C, so it's better to use objectFrom: instead.
Even better would be to be more precise about the kind of object you're creating. For example:
[NSArray arrayWithArray:]
[NSString stringWithFormat:]
Or in your case as you create a copy, and supposing you're creating "Client" objects:
[Client clientWithClient:options:]
Where with is not really needed.
For 2 I would choose:
copyWithOptions:
As you're more or less customizing [NSObject copy]. I would also implement only this method and delete the now redundant 1 as less methods is clearer, easier to document, and easier to maintain!
In case of doubt just search the SDK documentation to see how similar methods were named by Apple.
Edit:
In the first paragraph I don't mean to encourage bad naming practices, just to say that they are not the reason for your memory management concerns. Yet you should try to follow the naming conventions pointed in the other answers, or as I said, "do as Apple does".
Question
In my ARC project I have a class that manages objects, called LazyMutableArray. Some of the objects are actually nil, but users of my collection will never know about this; therefore I made it a subclass of NSMutableArray, and it tries to do "the same thing". In particular, objects are retained when added.
Now let's take a look at a memory behavior of other methods. It turns out that the NSArray destruction methods are documented by Apple to be an exception to this rule, in that they release, not autoreleased object.
There is some debate as to whether the combination of addObject: + objectAtIndex: + array destruction is documented by Apple to be never autoreleasing or simply happens to be in the examples I tested and in the example Apple includes.
How can I create in my subclass a method with exact same memory semantics?
Last update
After some thought, I've decided implementation based on NSMutableArray is more appropriate in this case compared to NSPointerArray. The new class, I should note, has the same retain/autorelease pair as the previous implementation.
Thanks to Rob Napier I see that no modification of my objectAtIndex: method would change this behavior, which answers my original question about this method.
On a practical level, several people said that any method can tackle an extra retain/autorelease pair for no reason; it's not reasonable to expect otherwise and not reasonable to try to find out which methods do this and which do not. It's been therefore a great learning opportunity for me on several levels.
Code (based on NSMutableArray) is available at GitHub: implementation, header, test (that's -testLazyMutableMemorySemantics).
Thank you all for participating.
Why I try to subclass NSMutableArray:
Subclassing foundation objects, I agree, is not always an appropriate solution. In tho case I have objects (in fact, OData resources), most of which have subobjects. The most natural class for an array of subobjects is obviously NSArray. Using a different class doesn't seem to make sense to me.
But for an OData collection this "array of sub objects", while, being an NSArray, must have a different implementation. Specifically, for a collection of 1000 elements, servers are encouraged to return collection in batches of (say)20, instead of all at once. If there is another pattern appropriate in this case, I'm all ears.
Some more detail in how I found this
I unit test the hell out of this collection, and values can be put into array, read from the array, and so forth. So far, so good. However, I realized that returning the object increases its retain count.
How do I see it? Suppose I insert two objects into lazy array lazy, one held weakly, one held strongly (*see the code *). Then retain count of weakSingleton is, as expected, 1. But now I read element:
XCTAssertEqual(weakSingleton, lazy[0], #"Correct element storage"); // line B
And in the debugger I see the retain count go up to 2. Of course, -retainCount may give me wrong information, so let's try to destroy the reference in array by
lazy[0] = nil; // yep, does the right thing
XCTAssertNil(weakSingleton, #"Dropped by lazy array"); // line C <-- FAIL
indeed, we see that weakSingleton is not released.
By now you probably guess that it's not just a retain, it's an autoreleased retain — putting an #autorelease around line B releases the weakSingleton. The exact source of this pair is not obvious, but seems to come from NSPointerArray -addPointer: (and unfortunately not from ARC's [[object retain] autorelease]). However, I don't want to return an autoreleased object and make method semantics different from its superclass!
After all, the method I'm overriding, NSMutableArray -objectAtIndex:`, doesn't do that; the object it returns will dealloc immediately if an array is released, as noted in the Apple's example. That's what I want: modify the method around line A so that the object it returns does not have an extra retain/autorelease pair. I'm not sure the compiler should even let me do it :)
Note 1 I could turn off ARC for a single file, but this would be my first non-ARC Objective-C code. And in any case the behavior may not some from ARC.
Note 2 What the fuss? Well, in this case I could change my unit tests, but still, the fact is that by adding or deleting line B, I'm changing the result of unit test at line C.
In other words, the described behavior of my method [LazyMutableArray -objectAtIndex] is essentially that by reading an object at index 0, I'm actually changing the retain count of this object, which means I could encounter unexpected bugs.
Note 3 Of course, if nothing is to be done about this, I'll document this behavior and move on; perhaps, this indeed should be considered an implementation detail, not to be included into tests.
Relevant methods from implementation
#implementation LazyMutableArray {
NSPointerArray *_objects;
// Created lazily, only on -setCount:, insert/add object.
}
- (id)objectAtIndex:(NSUInteger)index {
#synchronized(self) {
if (index >= self.count) {
return nil;
}
__weak id object = [_objects pointerAtIndex:index];
if (object) {
return object;
}
}
// otherwise do something else to compute a return value
// but this branch is never called in this test
[self.delegate array:self missingObjectAtIndex:index];
#synchronized(self) {
if (index >= self.count) {
return nil;
}
__weak id object = [_objects pointerAtIndex:index];
if (object) {
return object;
}
}
#throw([NSException exceptionWithName:NSObjectNotAvailableException
reason:#"Delegate was not able to provide a non-nil element to a lazy array"
userInfo:nil]);
}
- (void)createObjects {
if (!_objects) {
_objects = [NSPointerArray strongObjectsPointerArray];
}
}
- (void)addObject:(id)anObject {
[self createObjects];
[_objects addPointer:(__bridge void*)anObject];
}
The complete test code:
// Insert two objects into lazy array, one held weakly, one held strongly.
NSMutableArray * lazy = [LazyMutableArray new];
id singleton = [NSMutableArray new];
[lazy addObject:singleton];
__weak id weakSingleton = singleton;
singleton = [NSMutableDictionary new];
[lazy addObject:singleton];
XCTAssertNotNil(weakSingleton, #"Held by lazy array");
XCTAssertTrue(lazy.count == 2, #"Cleaning and adding objects");
// #autoreleasepool {
XCTAssertEqual(weakSingleton, lazy[0], #"Correct element storage");
XCTAssertEqual(singleton, lazy[1], #"Correct element storage");
// }
lazy = nil;
XCTAssertNotNil(singleton, #"Not dropped by lazy array");
XCTAssertNil(weakSingleton, #"Dropped by lazy array");
The last line fails, but it succeeds if I change first line to lazy = [NSMutableArray new] or if I uncomment #autoreleasepool.
First, I would not make this subclass. This is exactly what NSPointerArray is for. Wrapping that into an NSArray obscures important details that this approach can break. For example, what is the correct behavior for [NSArray arrayWithArray:lazyMutableArray] if lazyMutableArray includes NULLs? Algorithms that assume that NSArray can never include NULL need to be wary of the fact that this one can. It's true that you can get similar issues treating a non-retaining CFArray as an NSArray; I speak from experience that this is exactly why this kind of subclass can be very dangerous (and why I stopped doing that years ago). Don't create a subclass that cannot be used in every case that its superclass can be used (LSP).
If you have a collection with new semantics, I would subclass it from NSObject, and have it conform to <NSFastEnumeration>. See how NSPointerArray is not a subclass of NSArray. This was not an accident. Faced with the same problem, note the direction Apple chose.
By now you probably guess that it's not just a retain, it's an autoreleased retain — putting an #autorelease around line B releases the weakSingleton. This seems to be because line A under ARC translates to [[object retain] autorelease]. However, I don't want to return an autoreleased object and make caller remember this!
The caller should never assume anything else. The caller is never free to assume that a method does not add balanced autoreleases. If a caller wants the autorelease pool to drain, that is their responsibility.
All that said, there is some benefit to avoiding an extra autorelease if it's not required, and it's an interesting learning opportunity.
I would start by reducing this code to the simplest form, without your subclass at all. Just explore how NSPointerArray works:
__weak id weakobject;
#autoreleasepool
{
NSPointerArray *parray = [NSPointerArray strongObjectsPointerArray];
{
id object = [NSObject new];
[parray addPointer:(__bridge void*)object];
weakobject = object;
}
parray = nil;
}
NSAssert(!weakobject, #"weakobject still exists");
My structure here (such as the extra nesting block) is designed to try to avoid accidentally creating strong references I don't mean to make.
In my experiments, this fails without the autoreleasepool and succeeds with it. That indicates that the extra retain/autorelease is being added around or by the call to addPointer:, not by ARC modifying your interface.
If you're not using this implementation for addObject:, I'd be interested in digging deeper. It is an interesting question, even if I don't believe you should be subclassing this way.
I'm going to elaborate on why I said this "looks a lot like a homework assignment." This will likely earn me many down votes, but it will also server as a good learning case for others who later find this question.
Subclassing NSMutableArray not a goal of a program. It is a means to achieve something else. If I were to venture a guess, I expect you were trying to create an array that lazily creates the object when they are accessed. There are better ways to do this without dealing with memory management yourself.
Here's an example of how I would implement a lazy loading array.
#interface LazyMutableArray : NSMutableArray
- (id)initWithCreator:(id(^)(int))creator;
#end
#interface LazyMutableArray ( )
#property (nonatomic, copy) id (^creator)(int);
#property (nonatomic, assign) NSUInteger highestSet;
#end
#implementation LazyMutableArray
- (id)initWithCreator:(id(^)(int))creator
{
self = [super init];
if (self) {
self.highestSet = NSNotFound;
self.creator = creator;
}
return self;
}
- (id)objectAtIndex:(NSUInteger)index
{
id obj = nil;
if ((index < self.highestSet) && (self.highestSet != NSNotFound)) {
obj = [super objectAtIndex:index];
if ([obj isKindOfClass:[NSNull class]]) {
obj = self.creator(index);
[super replaceObjectAtIndex:index withObject:obj];
}
} else {
if (self.highestSet == NSNotFound) {
self.highestSet = 0;
}
while (self.highestSet < index) {
[super add:[NSNull null]];
self.highestSet += 1;
}
obj = self.creator(index);
[super add:obj];
self.highestSet += 1;
}
return obj;
}
Fair Warning: I'm not compiling or syntax checking any of this code. It probably has a few bugs in it, but it should generally work. Additionally, this implementation is missing an implementation of add:, count, removeObjectAtIndex:, insertObject:atIndex:, and possibly replaceObjectAtIndex:withObject:. What I show here is just to get you started.
I bet that I could find the answer of this question from reading similar threads here or by googling, but I would like "hear" it first hand so to speak because it's an anomaly in my understanding.
So here's the thing, I have some code which a previous employee wrote and I see a lot of a certain type of construct which looks rather odd to me and I just want to clarify what is "right and wrong".
For example
- (void) setWwanServiceId: (NSString *) newValue {
[wwanServiceId autorelease];
wwanServiceId = [newValue copy];
}
Here wwanServiceIdis a NSString member of the class, and to me this seem like a strange way to do it. As far as I understand it would begin by putting an autorelease on the object, basically saying: "whenever this object seem to not be used, release it for me I don't really care" then the copy will up the retain count +1 on.... wwanServiceId? or newValue? I guess the first.
Then to make me all more confused let's just quickly run through the life-cycle of the wwanServiceId-string..
basically the value will be set if we receive a notification which then from the notification-handler method will call the above -setWwanServiceId: method. other than that it will only ever be accessed for reading, so we are safe to say that it will at any given point:
put autorelease on object
retain a new string copy
Then there is one more quirk to this and this is where I am getting rather suspicious, namely in the -dealloc method which looks like this:
- (void) dealloc {
[[self wwanServiceId] release];
[super dealloc];
}
So what happens there? it will afaik release the wwanServiceId and as I said the only time it's memory management is being touched (if I haven't missed anything but I feel pretty sure) is to put an autorelease and retain it.
So to summarize:
Is the idea here that he thought that since he always retain a new copy after putting autorelease he need to release it in the end.. or well it's the only thing I can think about. Or just felt it would be safe to do an extra release in the end just in case..?
Because as far as I understand it, if this setter is called one time it will put an autorelease (-1 in future), do a retain (+1) and when destructor is called it will do the "final release" (-1).
Any ideas or suggestions helping me understand (if in fact I am wrong and the memory handling is correct as is) would be appreciated.
You wrote:
Here wwanServiceIdis a NSString member of the class, and to me this seem like a strange way to do it. As far as I understand it would begin by putting an autorelease on the object, basically saying: "whenever this object seem to not be used, release it for me I don't really care" then the copy will up the retain count +1 on.... wwanServiceId? or newValue? I guess the first.
This seems to point to the source of your confusion. wwanServiceId is a variable which can contain a reference to an object of type NSString. Variables do not have reference counts only objects do.
The previous employee wrote:
- (void) setWwanServiceId: (NSString *) newValue {
[wwanServiceId autorelease];
wwanServiceId = [newValue copy];
}
The expression [wwanServiceId autorelease] means: read the reference stored in wwanServiceId and autorelease the object that reference refers to - let's call that object A. Important: This does not delete object A; it will be released as some later stage and if at that time there are no remaining references object A will be deleted.
The expression [newValue copy] means: read the reference stored in newValue, use that to locate the object (call it object B), make a copy of that object to produce a new object (call it object C), and return a reference to the new object. This new object is owned by the caller of copy, so there is no need to retain it.
Finally the assignment stores the reference to object C into wwanServiceId.
So there is a maximum of three distinct objects involved:
A: the original object referenced by wwanServiceId, this is autoreleased to remove the ownership of wwanServiceId.
B: the object referenced by newValue, this is left untouched
C: a newly created copy of B owned through wwanServiceId
Why "autorelease" in the code and "maximum of three distinct" above?
The method could be called with newValue referencing object A, e.g. as in:
[self setWwanServiceId:[self wwanServiceId]]
If this was to occur and (a) release was used instead of autorelease and (b) there was no other reference to object A then the release would delete object A and then when [newValue copy] was evaluated newValue would be referencing a deleted object... The use of autorelease in this case delays the deletion until after the copy.
So what the previous employee wrote is not in any way "wrong", but as some of the other answer suggest it may be an unusual style. Another way you see this written is:
- (void) setWwanServiceId: (NSString *) newValue
{
NSString *oldValue = wwanServiceId;
wwanServiceId = [newValue copy];
[oldValue release];
}
which also ensures any deletion occurs after the copy.
HTH.
To be short and helpful:
This is wrong:
- (void) setWwanServiceId: (NSString *) newValue {
[wwanServiceId autorelease];
wwanServiceId = [newValue copy];
}
This is right:
- (void) setWwanServiceId: (NSString *) newValue {
if (newValue != wwanServiceId) {
[wwanServiceId release];
wwanServiceId = [newValue copy];
}
}
To explain in short:
[wwanServiceId autorelease]; is an unnecessary sent message, because autoreleasing an object will reduce the retain count at some unknown point in the future. And in the next line you are wwanServiceId = [newValue copy]; instantly setting the instance variable. So, in your memory you now have a to be autoreleased object and a new object. One of them is too much The new object is, where the pointer of your IVar is pointing to. The old one is swimming in your Memory Pool with probably no reference to it :-)
Autorelease as few as possible or use ARC.
Oh: And in the dealloc method, please do not send the message like this:
[[self wwanServiceId] release];
Better like this:
[wwanServiceId release];
as Apple recommends to work directly with instance methods in init and dealloc methods, instead of using getters and setters there.
Debug it and have a look.
[wwanServiceId autorelease];
wwanServiceId has an address. This statement does not change it. It does decrement the retain count of this object though.
Thats it.
wwanServiceId = [newValue copy];
This statement creates a new object. The new object is a copy of newValue. Compare the addresses of the objects and you will see, that the address inn wwanServiceId will vary from the address of newValue and it will vary from the address that wwanServiceId did have just before the statement was executed.
The retain, that is implicit in copy will affect wwanServiceId, but it affects the new object, that was just creaed with copy. It does not affect the wwanServiceId object which was autoreleased during the statement before.
At some point after the execution of setWwanServiceId had finished, the old and autoreleased object will dissappear. (Assuming that the retain count is 0 now. If it is >0 because it is still retained for other reasons or just for error, then it will remain and potentially cause a leak.)
Once you understood that you will not question any more what is happening in the dealloc method. wwanServiceId is released. Meaning its retain count is reduced by 1. In the event that it is 0 then it will be deallocated automatically.
You could even autorelease it there too. The diffrerence to autorelease is basically that an autoreleased object is still around and available while the current method is being executed. Its release comes into effect at some later point in time.
But there is no reason for autoreleasing the object in dealloc.
In the example given there is not even a good reason to autorelease the object in the setter setWwanServiceId. You may well release the object directly in both methods.
Assuming wwanServiceId is the private ivar mapped by the getter wwanServiceId and setter setWwanServiceId, I think it is not correct to autorelease the ivar in the setter.
I would have coded the following:
- (void) setWwanServiceId: (NSString *) newValue {
if (newValue != wwanServiceId) {
[wwanServiceId release];
wwanServiceId = [newValue copy];
}
}
What I mean is: it is not necessary to give ownership of your var to the autorelease pool (which it may be drained at the end of the application). Simply release the ivar. If someone is using it, no problem, it will have a strong reference to it. Otherwise it will be deallocated.
I was told by a fellow StackOverflow user that I should not use the getter method when releasing a property:
#property(nonatmic, retain) Type* variable;
#synthesize variable;
// wrong
[self.variable release];
// right
[variable release];
He did not explain in detail why. They appear the same to me. My iOS book said the getter on a property will look like this:
- (id)variable {
return variable;
}
So doesn't this mean [self variable], self.variable, and variable are all the same?
For a retained property with no custom accessor, you can release the object by:
self.variable = nil;
This has the effect of setting the ivar (which may not be called 'variable' if you have only declared properties) to nil and releasing the previous value.
As others have pointed out, either directly releasing the ivar (if available) or using the method above is OK - what you must not do is call release on the variable returned from a getter.
You can optionally write custom getter behavior, which may result in completely different behavior. So, you cannot always assume that [variable release] has the same results as [self.variable release].
As well, you can write custom properties without an exclusive ivar backing them... it can get messy fast if you start releasing objects from references returned by getters!
There may be additional reasons that I'm unaware of...
A typical getter will look more like this:
- (id)variable {
return [[variable retain] autorelease];
}
So if you use [self.variable release] you have an additional retain and autorelease that you don't really need when you just want to release the object and that cause the object to be released later than necessary (when the autorelease pool is drained).
Typically, you would either use self.variable = nil which has the benefit that it also sets the variable to nil (avoiding crashes due to dangling pointers), or [variable release] which is the fastest and may be more appropriate in a dealloc method if your setter has custom logic.
not all getters take this form:
- (id)variable { return variable; }
...that is merely the most primitive form. properties alone should suggest more combinations, which alter the implementation. the primitive accessor above does not account for idioms used in conjunction with memory management, atomicity, or copy semantics. the implementation is also fragile in subclass overrides.
some really brief examples follow; things obviously become more complex in real programs where implementations become considerably more complex.
1) the getter may not return the instance variable. one of several possibilities:
- (NSObject *)a { return [[a copy] autorelease]; }
2) the setter may not retain the instance variable. one of several possibilities:
- (void)setA:(NSObject *)arg
{
...
a = [arg copy];
...
}
3) you end up with memory management implementation throughout your program, which makes it difficult to maintain. the semantics of the class (and how it handles instance variables' ref counting) should be kept to the class, and follow conventions for expected results:
- (void)stuff:(NSString *)arg
{
const bool TheRightWay = false;
if (TheRightWay) {
NSMutableString * string = [arg mutableCopy];
[string appendString:#"2"];
self.a = string;
[string release];
// - or -
NSMutableString * string = [[arg mutableCopy] autorelase];
[string appendString:#"2"];
self.a = string;
}
else {
NSMutableString * string = [arg mutableCopy];
[string appendString:#"2"];
self.a = string;
[self.a release];
}
}
failing to follow these simple rules makes your code hard to maintain and debug and painful to extend.
so the short of it is that you want to make your program easy to maintain. calling release directly on a property requires you to know a lot of context of the inner workings of the class; that's obviously bad and misses strong ideals of good OOD.
it also expects the authors/subclassers/clients to know exactly how the class deviates from convention, which is silly and time consuming when issues arise and you have to relearn all the inner details when issues arise (they will at some point).
those are some trivial examples of how calling release on the result of a property introduces problems. many real world problems are much subtler and difficult to locate.
I am learning memory management, but I don't really understand why I should implement my attribute getter like this:
-(Weapon*)myWeapon
{
[myWeapon retain];
[myWeapon autorelease];
return myWeapon;
}
I understand what I wrote, but I can't imagine why it is important? Can you please explain why I should do this?
This is from the Memory Management Programming guide:
Technique 1
In technique 1, values returned by the getter are autoreleased within the calling scope:
- (NSString*) title {
return [[title retain] autorelease];
}
- (void) setTitle: (NSString*) newTitle {
if (title != newTitle) {
[title release];
title = [newTitle retain]; // Or copy, depending on your needs.
}
}
Because the object returned from the get accessor is autoreleased in the current scope, it remains valid if the property value is changed. This makes the accessor more robust, but at the cost of additional overhead. If you expect your getter method to be called frequently, the added cost of retaining and autoreleasing the object may not be worth the performance cost.
Technique 2
Like technique 1, technique 2 also uses an autorelease technique, but this time does so in the setter method:
- (NSString*) title {
return title;
}
- (void) setTitle: (NSString*) newTitle {
[title autorelease];
title = [newTitle retain]; // Or copy, depending on your needs.
}
The performance of technique 2 is significantly better than technique 1 in situations where the getter is called much more often than the setter.
Technique 3
Technique 3 avoids the use of autorelease altogether:
- (NSString*) title {
return title;
}
- (void) setTitle: (NSString*) newTitle {
if (newTitle != title) {
[title release];
title = [newTitle retain]; // Or copy, depending on your needs.
}
}
The approach used by technique 3 is good for frequently called getter and setter methods. It is also good for objects that do not want to extend the lifetime of their values, such as collection classes. Its disadvantage is that the old value may be deallocated immediately (if there are no other owners), which will cause a problem if another object is maintaining a non-owning reference to it. For example:
NSString *oldTitle = [anObject title];
[anObject setTitle:#"New Title"];
NSLog(#"Old title was: %#", oldTitle);
If anObject was the only object that owned the original title string, then the string will be deallocated after the new title is set. The log statement would then cause a crash as oldTitle is a freed object.
EDIT: Basically the point of retaining and then auto-releasing is to ensure that the object won't get deallocated if the property value is changed before the calling scope has a chance to retain it. This isn't usually an issue unless you've got asynchronous code. In most situations - (Weapon *)myWeapon { return myWeapon; } is just fine (plus it's faster).
As ACBurk says, but there is a good description here:
http://vgable.com/blog/2009/03/31/how-to-write-cocoa-object-getters/