Question

Does these two snippets accomplish the same thing? Assuming I have three IBOutlet UIButtons in my interface file called buttonOne, buttonTwo, and buttonThree:

- (void)dealloc {
    for(UIButton* idx in self.view.subviews)
        [idx release], idx = nil;

    [super dealloc];
}

and

- (void)dealloc {
    [buttonOne release], buttonOne = nil;
    [buttonTwo release], buttonTwo = nil;
    [buttonThree release], buttonThree = nil;
    [super dealloc];
}

Edit:

As ARC sometimes seems like a fix-all alternative to memory management in iOS, I prefer not to use it because a) I feel like I’m cheating and b) if I am not mistaken, it only works on iOS 5 devices.

Answer 1

Assuming you don’t have any other subviews, those two pieces of code do the same thing. But it’s not a thing you should do.

You should declare your outlets weak (if using ARC) or assign (if not using ARC). Then you don’t have to release them in dealloc. A UIView retains its subviews and releases them when it is deallocated, so you don’t need to retain or release them. You just release self.view (or, if you’re a subclass of UIViewController, you let [super dealloc] take care of releasing self.view).