Difference between [[NSDate date] retain] and [[NSDate alloc] init]

Question

As both of the following serves the same purpose,

today = [[NSDate date] retain];    

and

today = [[NSDate alloc] init]; 
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Answer 1

There is essentially no difference, except that the former puts the object in the autorelease pool unnecessarily.

If I want to retain the object after creating it, and an -init style method is available for the class, I almost always choose that over the convenience constructor plus -retain.