Question

if I do this:

NSDate *dateStart;
[dateStart alloc];

// Initialise with a date somewhere here..

..

// Modify the start date.
dateStart = [chosenDate copy];

Should I be doing a [dateStart release] before assigning the dateStart pointer?

I’m from a C/C++ background and I don’t understand the whole ObjectiveC/iOS garbage collection behaviour (if indeed there is any). My C background is telling me I should be freeing the initial NSDate object that dateStart is pointing to. Would that be correct?

Answer 1

Yes since you allocated it before you should release it before this line

//Release it before reassign
[dateStart release];
dateStart = [chosenDate copy];

Also notice that its preferred that you do the allocation and initialization on the same line, dont break them to multiple lines

So this

NSDate *dateStart;
[dateStart alloc];

Would change to

NSDate *dateStart = [[dateStart alloc] init....];