Question

Possible Duplicate:
NSString retain Count

Is it possible that any object has its retain count in negative value ?

I have this code

NSString *str = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@"Hello World"];
NSLog(@"String Retain Count: %i", [str retainCount]);

this will return the retain count -1.

Why this happened ?

also I have done like this

NSString *str = [[NSString alloc] init]

still its return negative value in retain count.

How this is happening ?

Please help to understand this thing!!!!!

Answer 1

retainCount doesn’t return the reference count of an object. – it returns unrelated nonsense.

(For performance reasons, immutable constant strings, when copied, return self. If you compare the pointer to @"" and [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@""], they will be equal.)