Question

In my app I have a UIViewController subclass (VC for short) that I only use in one place in the entire app. In that place, I have been creating and pushing it like this:

MyViewController* VC = [MyViewController new];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:VC animated:YES];
[VC release];

but I was thinking that since this is the only place I am using a view controller of this type, I could do something like this so the settings used won’t be reset each time the view controller is pushed onto the stack:

static MapsToSendPicker* VC = nil; 
if(!VC) {
    VC = [MapsToSendPicker new];
}

[self.navigationController pushViewController:VC animated:YES];
[VC release];

The problem with that code is that in VC’s dealloc method, I release all of my instance variables and set them to nil, and finally I call [super dealloc]. This deallocates the static view controller, but the test if(!VC) isn’t evaluated to true after (this would defeat the purpose of the whole idea if it were; then I’d have to recreate the view controller each time anyway).

My solution is overriding the dealloc method in MyViewController and not calling [super dealloc] at the end. This works, but the compiler raises a warning. How can I get rid of that warning while maintaining the functionality I gain with this design? Thanks!

Edit:

After a quick Google search, I have found this solution:

- (void)dealloc {
    if(NO) {
        [super dealloc];
    }
}

but I would like something a little bit… cleaner. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Remove the [VC release]; line and add [super dealloc] back. Everything will work properly and dealloc will never get called. Generally you should consider using NSUserDefaults in order to restore the VC properties instead of keeping the controller in memory all the time.