Michael Ash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Override -dealloc if you have any instance variables pointing to objects
> that you own. This all comes down to memory management; if at some point
> you allocated, copied, or retained an object and put it in an instance
> variablel, you should release it here.
A minor nit - I prefer to release instance variables (if they're objects)
in their accessor methods. One common way to do this is with the accessors
that can be automatically generated by Xcode:
- (void)setFoo:(NSObject *)value {
if (foo != value) {
[foo release];
foo = [value copy];
}
}
There are many variations on this theme of course - and at least one utility
(Accessorizer) to help manage them all. What they all share though, is the
goal of placing the retention action (a -copy in this case) in the same place
as its matching release. It's a simple pattern; if you want to refer to some-
thing later, you store a reference to it using an accessor. The accessor will,
at the same time, take care of releasing any previous references if needed.
A great deal of confusion seems to come out of not using this pattern, and
scattering memory management code everywhere - often seemingly at random -
instead.
To support this pattern, I don't use -release in -dealloc. Instead, I'd use
the accessor there as well:
[self setFoo:nil];
sherm--
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