Question

I’ve got a simple question about objective-c.

I’ve been taught to lazily instantiate my properties by synthesizing them and then overriding the getter in the following manner.

-(SomeClass *)someProperty {
    if ( !_someProperty )
        _someProperty = [[SomeClass alloc] init ]
    return _someProperty
}

What happens when I don’t do this? I ask this because I have properties that are not allocated & instantiated in this manner and they seem (maybe not) to behave just fine.

My only guess is that if a property is unallocated & instantiated it will be left as nil; in which case messaging nil would do nothing. Is this correct?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

Yes, messaging nil is just fine. You don’t have to override any getters to lazily initialize your properties. See this: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/cocoa/conceptual/objectivec/Chapters/ocObjectsClasses.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30001163-CH11-SW7