On Oct 19, 2009, at 23:35, Nick Rogers wrote:
Since the methods -release, -retain and -autorelease are no-ops with
GC only enabled, How do I release everything associated with an ivar
(pointer to a class) in AppController?
Currently I'm doing it by setting this pointer as nil. Is it ok?
Also when I follow certain steps, this pointer gets a lot of memory
attached, down the line. which gets released (when I set it to nil)
as per Obj-Alloc instrument.
But when following another certain steps, this memory doesn't get
released (when setting this pointer nil), why? With GC only enabled
this should get freed up.
You should read -- several times probably -- the documentation on the
garbage collector:
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/GarbageCollection/Introduction.html
That will tell you that you don't have to do anything to 'release'
memory under GC -- memory is collected when there are no "live"
references to it. So if your pointer is *the* reference that's keeping
the memory alive (along with everything indirectly pointed to), then
yes setting the pointer to nil should result in the whole shebang be
collected -- at some later time that you don't directly control.
OTOH, if the ivar is in an instance which is itself unreferenced,
setting the ivar to nil is unnecessary because it's no longer a live
reference. A typical usage scenario of this is when the pointer to the
instance is in a local (stack) variable of a method, and you return
from the method. There's no need to nil anything in that case, because
the return ends the lifetime of the instance, which the ends the
lifetime of the object pointed to by the ivar, which ends ... etc.
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