Question

This may sound a newbie question … but however I’m new to iOS development.

I’ve created UITabController object programmatically like this.

mTabBarController = [[UITabBarController alloc] init];
...
mTabBarController.viewControllers = [NSArray arrayWithArray:tabBarItems];
[tabBarItems release];

And releasing mTabBarController in dealloc like this.

- (void)dealloc {
    [mTabBarController release];
}

Now my question : will I get a memory leak ? When I assign value t viewController the ref count of tabBarItems is still 1. When I release mTabBarController does it also release all its viewcontrollers ?

Answer 1

Yes, the tab controller owns an array of view controllers (and everything in an array is retained). You’re not creating a leak as long as you properly release or autorelease the items you’re adding to the tabBarItems array.

It really helps to think of object relationships as ownerships.