Home/ Questions/Q 8122413
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-06T05:49:35+00:00

What is the difference between strong and weak IBOutlets in the Xcode iOS 5.1

  • 0

What is the difference between strong and weak IBOutlets in the Xcode iOS 5.1 SDK?

I was previously using the 4.3 SDK, where strong IBOutlets did not exist. In addition, (auto)release is not available in the iOS 5.1 SDK.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Strong means that as long as this property points to an object, that object will not be automatically released. In non-ARC it’s a synonym for retain

    Specifies that there is a strong (owning) relationship to the
    destination object.

    Weak instead, means that the object the property points to, is free to release but only if it sets the property to NULL. In ARC you use weak to ensure you do not own the object it points to

    Specifies that there is a weak (non-owning) relationship to the
    destination object. If the destination object is deallocated, the
    property value is automatically set to nil.

    Nonatomic means that if multiple threads try to read or to change the property at once, badness can happen. Consequences are that there will be partially-written values or over-released objects = CRASH.

    Take also a look here, at Apple’s documents.

    From there, examples are

    @property (weak) IBOutlet MyView *viewContainerSubview;
@property (strong) IBOutlet MyOtherClass *topLevelObject;

    Check also this to know more about strong and weak.

    • 0