Question

My object is not getting released from memory so I override retain method and put a breakpoint in to see where in code it gets retained.

Every time the object is referenced using a property accessor the retain method is called. Why would this be happening?

color = self.myobject.color

calls retain.

Answer 1

The synthesized property accessor for retained properties looks something like this:

- (UIColor *)color
{
    return [[_color retain] autorelease];
}

Therefore, your retain method is called, but it’s balanced with an autorelease.

See this code snippet in the Objective-C Programming Language Guide for an example of how a synthesized accessor might look (the locking part doesn’t apply in the nonatomic case, but the retain-autorelease is the same).