Objective-C/Cocoa: Do I have a memory leak here?

Question

I have a calling method that looks like the following:

-(void)callingMethod
{
     NSMutableString *myStr = [[[NSMutableString alloc] initWithCapacity:0] autorelease];
     myStr = [self calledMethod];
}

And my called method:

-(NSMutableString*)calledMethod
{
    NSMutableString *newStr = [[NSMutableString alloc] initWithCapacity:0];
    // do some stuff with newStr
    return [newStr autorelease];
}

Am I leaking memory anywhere here? I feel like I'm allocing an unnecessary amount here.

Answer 1

No, you're not leaking memory, but your instinct that you are allocing an unnecessary amount here is correct.

At a minimum, you should consider rewriting the callingMethod as:

- (void)callingMethod
{
    NSMutableString *myStr = [self calledMethod];
}

You can also tidy up the calledMethod as:

- (NSMutableString*)calledMethod
{
    return [NSMutableString stringWithCapacity:0]; // why 0 capacity?
}