What happens if I release an autoreleased object? Its an autoreleased UIButton I want to release and the only way to create a UIButton is to use the convinience method buttonWithType:. Will it be released from memory like a normal object? Or should I just let the autoreleasepool take care of it? I wouldn't have made it autoreleased in the first place if I could.
Thanks!!
You should just let the autorelease pool take care of it. Once you add your button to a parent view, that view will retain it, and the autoreleased handle will get taken care of by the autorelease pool.
The easiest way to think of it is in terms of ownership—you don't "own" the reference you got via a convenience method, so you don't need to bother releasing it unless you retain it as well.
You must only release an object which you own. +buttonWithType: does not return an owned object, so you must not release it.
Review the Cocoa Object Ownership Rules.
Why are you trying to avoid an autoreleased object here? Presumably you are creating the button because you are using the button and inserting it into a view hierarchy, so there is no real reason to accelerate the draining of the autorelease pool which contains the button.