Question

I’ve been playing around so much now with ObjC that I feel lost as far as “autoreleasing” is concerned.

in my .h:

NSString *sAStringMember;

in my .m:

-(void) createAString
{
 NSString *sAString = [NSString stringWithString:[dummyCode...get String ffrom some input field for instance]];
 sAStringMember = sAString;
}

Several short questions:

1. In “createAString:” an autoreleased string “sAString” is created. If sAString is autoreleased (when is this going to happen?), also my member “sAStringMember” will point to an invalid address, correct?

2. If above assumption is correct, would it be an option to release sAStringMember before assigning sAString to it and then retain it?

3. Best would be use “copy” to copy sAString to sAStringMember I suppose?

René

Answer 1

(1) Yes.
(3) Either -retain or -copy is fine.

The best would be using declared property.

@interface Foo : ... {
  NSString* sAStringMember;
}
@property(copy) NSString* sAStringMember;   // or retain.
@end
...
@implementation Foo
@synthesize sAStringMember;
...
-(void) createAString {
  self.sAStringMember = [dummyCode...get String ffrom some input field for instance];
}
-(void)dealloc {
  ...
  [sAStringMember release];
  [super dealloc];
}
@end

(Also, please avoid Hungarian notation.)