Question

I have some memory leaks in my app and I think they trace back to my – (id)copyWithZone:(NSZone *)zone method of my ‘Project’ class. The purpose of this copy is to create a deep copy as the values need to be changed without affecting the original values. This class has a custom init method:

- (id)initWithProjectID:(NSInteger)aProjectID name:(NSString *)aProjectName private:(BOOL)isPrivateProject userProjectOrderTieID:(NSInteger)aUserProjectOrderTieID orderID:(NSInteger)anOrderID {
self = [super init];
if (self) {
    projectID = aProjectID;
    projectName = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:aProjectName];
    isPrivate = isPrivateProject;
    userProjectOrderTieID = aUserProjectOrderTieID;
    orderID = anOrderID;
}
return self;
}

and a copy method of:

- (id)copyWithZone:(NSZone *)zone {

Project *copy = [[[self class] allocWithZone:zone]
                 initWithProjectID:projectID
                 name:projectName
                 private:isPrivate
                 userProjectOrderTieID:userProjectOrderTieID 
                 orderID:orderID];

return copy;

}

and for completeness the dealloc method:

- (void)dealloc {
[projectName release];
[super dealloc];
}

All ivars are NSIntegers apart from projectName is a NSString. Can anyone see any issues with this code?

Answer 1

Nothing stands out as being wrong in what you posted. I suspect the leak is somewhere else. Are you sure the copied Project object being returned is being released properly? Remember that -copyWithZone: returns an object that is already retained.

The leaks tool would probably identify the line in -copyWithZone: as the offending line where the memory leak originated, because … well it is, but it doesn’t mean that it is the place you need to fix.