NSArray randomly turning into different things!

Question

I am having a problem with memory management I think. My NSArray (called arr) is turning into different things at random times. I have no idea why. I have a .h file that that declares the array, and then I initialize the array using

NSString *input = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:myData encoding:NSACIIStringEncoding];
arr = [input componentsSeperatedByString:@"\n"];

and then I use it throughout the program and suddenly it changes into different things (UITouch, sometimes, for example). I never called a release on it. Why is it doing this? How do I prevent objects from randomly being changed due to memory issues?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Try to retain arr.

arr = [[input componentsSeperatedByString:@"\n"] retain];

Answer 2

Or Initalize a new Array with this array:

arr = [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray:input];

Answer 3

What happens, is that the memory, once occupied by your NSArray, is occupied by another object. This may be any object, and since you're touching the screen a lot a UITouch is very common.

This means you're not retaining the NSArray when you should, so it is released prematurely. You don't show the code declaring arr, but if you declare arr as

@property (nonatomic,retain) NSArray *arr;

and synthesize it using

@synthesize arr;

then the retaining is handled by simply assiging to self.arr instead of arr:

self.arr = [input componentsSeperatedByString:@"\n"];

In cocoa-speak, your object now "owns" the array. In the dealloc method of this class, you should [self.arr release].

Should you assign some other array to self.arr, the object assigned to self.arr previously will get released, and the new one retained.