Question

I’m just learning Objective C, so I’m probably missing something, but the below code is a leak, right?

Taken from apple’s docs:

- (NSString*) title {
    return [[title retain] autorelease];
}

- (void) setTitle: (NSString*) newTitle {
    if (title != newTitle) {
        [title release];
        title = [newTitle retain]; // Or copy, depending on your needs.
    }
}

The getter retains and autoreleases (cancelling each other out), but the setter retains also. That stops the reference count from ever reaching 0, right? What am I missing?

Answer 1

What you’re missing (because it’s not shown in the example) is that there will be a release for all retained properties in the object’s dealloc method.