http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=47012
--- Comment #4 from Nicola Pero <nicola at gcc dot gnu.org> 2010-12-19 19:12:33 UTC --- Yes, I was actually thinking about this, and you're right - it makes sense not to use retain/autorelease! ;-) 'nonatomic' means that other threads are not involved. Which also means that the programmer calling the accessor has full control of what happens (there aren't alternative flows of execution that may jump in); he should do the retain/autorelease himself if there is a risk that something he does while using the object returned may call the accessor setter and trigger a release of the object; else, he can get away without a retain/autorelease and get a good speedup. And doing the same that Apple does is obviously helpful for portability. So I made the change in subversion. Thanks PS: GCC is currently in bug-fixing mode only for 4.6 so we can't accept non-bug-fix changes, but as soon as it reopens, you're very welcome to contribute. Faster method lookup sounds very exciting (and non-trivial).
