What's the difference between setting an object to nil vs. sending it a release message in dealloc

Question

I have Object:

MyClass *obj= [[MyClass alloc] init];

What\'s the difference between:

[obj release]; // Only obj own this ob         


        

Answer 1

iOS does not support garbage collection, which means that doing obj = nil would result in a memory leak. If you want automatic control over deallocation, you should do something like: obj = [[[NSObject alloc] init] autorelease] (you must NOT release it if you do that). Autorelease would cause the object to be automatically released when the current NSRunloop event ends. The NSRunloop automatically drains it's NSAutoReleasePool for each event iteration, which is usually very helpful.