iPhone Dev - NSString Creation

Question

I\'m really confused with NSStrings. Like when should I do

NSString *aString = @\"Hello\";

of should it be:

NSString *aString =         


        

Answer 1

NSString *aString = @"Hello";

Will create an autoreleased string. That is, if you don't explicitly retain it, it will might disappear after your method is over (and sometimes that's totally fine). But if you want to hold on to it past that time, you'll need to retain it.

If you create a property for that string like this

@property (retain) NSString *aString;

And then assign like this:

self.aString = @"Hello";

Then you've properly retained the string and it will stick around.

On the other hand, using alloc, init will create a string for you with a retain count of 1, and if you don't need it past that method, you should release it.

****Edit: @"Hello" is not an autoreleased string, as others have pointed out. My bad. ****