Why should a self-implemented getter retain and autorelease the returned object?

Question

Example:

- (NSString*) title {
    return [[title retain] autorelease];
}

The setter actually retained it already, right? and actually nobo

Answer 1

I haven't seen this pattern before, but it seems fairly pointless to me. I guess the intent is to keep the returned value safe if the client code calls "release" on the parent object. It doesn't really hurt anything, but I doubt that situation comes up all that often in well-designed libraries.

---

Ah, ok. from the documentation smorgan linked to, it seems this is now one of the methods that Apple is currently recommending that people use. I think I still prefer the old-school version:

- (NSString *) value
{
    return myValue;
}

- (void) setValue: (NSString *) newValue
{
    if (newValue != myValue)
    {
       [myValue autorelease]; // actually, I nearly always use 'release' here
       myValue = [newValue retain];
    }
}