Objective-C memory management

Here is a quick summary of Objective-C memory management.

Objects are reference counted, so if you do:

NSClass *objp = [[NSClass alloc] init];

It will need an accompanying:

[objp release];

But many Core Foundation classes also have factory (class) methods that look like:

NSSomething *objp = [NSSomething somethingWithInitializer:initializer];

For example, NSArray methods +array, +arrayWithArray, +subarrayWithArray, ...; NSString methods +string, +stringWithString, ...; and so on. The convention used by Core Foundation is that the object returned by factory methods still have reference count of 1, but they are added to the "autorelease" pool. You do not release nor autorelease these objects!

The "autorelease" pool is simply a list of objects to be released at a later time. The pool is dynamically scoped (like exception frames) and is unrelated to the static (lexical) scope of the program. When the program leaves an autorelease scope, all the objects in the pool of that scope are released. An object can be added to the pool several times, in which case it will be released the same number of times they are added to the pool. There doesn't seem to be any way to take an object out of autorelease pool.

Cocoa's Event Manager always creates an autorelease pool frame prior to handling an event. The frame is popped after calling the event handler. This means your program typically creates some garbage that is cleaned up altogether after finishing an event. Objects that outlive the scope of an event must be explicitly retained.

Apparently, Leopard also supports garbage collection with the -fobjc-gc GCC flag.