Question

When I first read Beginning iOS 3 Development before ARC, I remember seeing patterns like this in some ViewController class:

.h
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *myArray;

.m
in viewDidLoad:
NSArray *tempArray = [[NSArray alloc] init];
self.myArray = tempArray;
[tempArray release];

I remember reading that you did this so the properties could handle the memory for you if you used the property setters/getters. So now with ARC, I’m wondering if you still follow that kind of variable creation. For example, if you start a new project in iOS 6, in the AppDelegate, they do

.h
@property (strong, nonatomic) ViewController *viewController;
.m
    self.viewController = [[ViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"ViewController" bundle:nil];

The temp variable is not created in this case. I was wondering why and if I should be following that pattern instead of the first one. Thanks!

Answer 1

They are the same pattern except now ARC properly handles the release for you. The 2nd block of code is just fine with ARC. That’s what makes ARC so nice.