Question

I understand WHY we would use weakSelf in a block, just not so much when.

I am converting a codebase to ARC which gives a lot of retain cycle warnings with blocks. From the documentation I’ve gathered that I need to change this:

[self.selectedAsset addToFavoritesWithCompletion:^(NSError *error) {
    self.selectedAsset.isFavorite = YES;
    [self updateIsFavoriteButton];
}];

to this:

__weak MyViewController* weakSelf = self;
[self.selectedAsset addToFavoritesWithCompletion:^(NSError *error) {
    self.selectedAsset.isFavorite = YES;
    [weakSelf updateIsFavoriteButton];
}];

To make the compiler happy and avoid retain loops. My question is why isn’t it necessary to change the line:

self.selectedAsset.isFavorite = YES;

to use weakSelf? Doesn’t it evaluate to a method call as well? Why doesn’t the compiler warn about lines in this format?

[[self selectedAsset]setIsFavorite:YES];

EDIT: I just update to XCode 4.6, and it now generates compiler warnings for just this situation. Funny timing 🙂

Answer 1

My question is why isn’t it necessary to change the line:

self.selectedAsset.isFavorite = YES; to use weakSelf? Doesn’t it
evaluate to a method call as well? Why doesn’t the compiler warn about
lines in this format?

[[self selectedAsset]setIsFavorite:YES];

Yes, it is exactly a method call. And it does cause a strong reference to self. And it IS necessary to change it to weakSelf if you want it to not retain self.

Compiler warnings do not catch everything.