On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 11:53 PM, mmalcolm crawford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Nov 19, 2008, at 8:40 PM, Michael Ash wrote: > >> On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 5:41 PM, mmalcolm crawford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> wrote: >>> >>> On Nov 19, 2008, at 2:29 PM, Michael Ash wrote: >>>> >>>> Because there's essentially no good way to dispose of properties given >>>> the way that they're implemented. >>> >>> I'm not sure why this is the case? >>> You send a release message to instance variables for which there is a >>> corresponding retain or copy property. >> >> This does not qualify as "good" in my book. A fundamental of good >> programming is "once and only once". You've now described the >> semantics of these properties in two different places in your code >> and, worse, one of those places is implicit rather than explicit. >> > I'm not sure what you mean here? > There is only one place where the semantics are described: In the property > declaration. > Whether you release or not in dealloc is a corollary of that declaration.
Well, I think this is just a question of wording. It's true that it's only described in one place, but you have to get it right in two places. Whenever you have a situation like that and the compiler can't check it (like in this case), then you have a potential to get mixed up, especially if you make changes later on. It would be fairly easy for the properties mechanism to provide a way to use the @property declaration to generate the correct -dealloc behavior. In fact, there is one, "self.whateverProperty = nil", it's just that this has other unfortunate side effects. An alternate version with no side effects would remove this deficiency. > In which case we may be mostly in violet (sic) agreement. > I obviously see significant benefits to using properties, and agree that > their utility *might* be enhanced if they could also handle dealloc. I got > the impression that others here were suggesting that they provide little or > no benefit at all... Yeah, I didn't get that impression myself. It's just a bit painful to see such a construct when a small addition to it would have made a significant improvement. Mike _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
