Question

Automatic Reference Counting releases Objective-C objects that have been allocated. What about primitive variables like char *?

Answer 1

No as per the llvm document on ARC

Automatic Reference Counting implements automatic memory management for Objective-C objects and blocks, freeing the programmer from the need explicitly insert retains and releases. It does not provide a cycle collector; users must explicitly manage lifetime instead.

and

A retainable object pointer (or retainable pointer) is a value of a retainable object pointer type (retainable type). There are three kinds of retainable object pointer types:

• block pointers (formed by applying the caret (^) declarator sigil to a function type)
• Objective-C object pointers (id, Class, NSFoo*, etc.)
• typedefs marked with __attribute__((NSObject))

Other pointer types, such as int* and CFStringRef, are not subject to ARC’s semantics and
restrictions.