Question

In most of the code that I’ve sen using autorelease, the object is ultimately returned from the function.Clearly release cannot be called after this point and autorelease is the way to go. However in situations where the object is going to passed to another object that will retain it is using autorelease just as valid?

For example

-(void)foo
{
   SomeClass *someObject = [[[SomeClass alloc] init] autorelease];
   //Do some things
   self.someOtherClass.someProperty = someObject;
}

Is there any practical difference to releasing the object after it is assigned to someProperty:

-(void)foo
{
   SomeClass *someObject = [[SomeClass alloc] init]];
   //Do some things
   self.someOtherClass.someProperty = someObject;
   [someObject release];
}

Are there any situations where the later is more preferable to the former?

Answer 1

Both are acceptable, but you are accouraged to use the release version to avoid memory spikes an other problems.

It’s acceptable to release here because you can assume that the receiver of the object will retain it, if it needs if later. So you can safely release as soon as it’s given.