Question

There is a copy attribute for synthesised accessor methods ex:

@property (copy) NSMutableString *string;

When assign using this setter method it seems to always call the copy method, even though I would like to create a mutable copy of what ever I assign to string, during assignment of the instance variable string.

Is this a know issue and are there any workarounds?

Thanks 🙂

Answer 1

Don’t call @synthesize string in your .m implementation file and instead write your own getter.

e.g.

- (NSMutableString *) string
{
    NSMutableString * stringToReturn = [NSMutableString stringWithString: someStringObject];
}

More information about properties (and what to do when you don’t do @synthesize) can be found at:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjectiveC/Chapters/ocProperties.html

p.s. the property name “string” may be confusing to anyone else who looks at your code down the road… I’d recommend changing that to be more program-specific