Question

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Im getting this error ‘autorelease’ is unavailable: not available in automatic reference counting mode

I’m learning Objective-C with a book called Objective-C fundamentals, published 2011. It’s building a simple app to introduce iOS concepts and teach the Objective-C language. Seems like there’s been some changes to the platform or language since publication of the book. When I try to build code from the book (key passage excerpted below), I’m getting this error:

autorelease is unavailable: not available in automatic reference counting mode
ARC forbids explicit message send of 'autorelease'

The error message appears a few lines above where autorelease is actually used in the code.

I only have about 1 hour’s worth of experience with Objective-C and iOS, so I have no idea how to fix this so I can continue along with the book. Any help would be appreciated.

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";
    UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView
                             dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    if (cell == nil){                        #### error message here
        cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc]
                initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault
                 reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier]autorelease];  ### autorelease used here
    }
    cell.textLabel.text = [NSString
                           stringWithFormat:@"Rental Property %d", indexPath.row];
    NSLog(@"Rental Property %d", indexPath.row);
    return cell; 
}

If I can’t fix these types of small problems, then I won’t be able to follow along with the book. If there’s some sort of version system I could use (like rvm for Ruby) to avoid this type of problem, please let me know.

Answer 1

If you are only an hour in, I recommending restarting.

There is a feature to building objective-c projects in Xcode called automatic-reference counting. Your book is not using it.

When you restart, pay close attention when going through the wizard to creating a project. You will need to make sure the

Use Automatic Reference Counting

is not selected.