Wanted to share an important insigt I found out today about the .self notation in ObjC

Question

Hi,

First thanks so much to users in this site for many answers I stumble upon when investigating bugs...

I am working now a few months on a Obj-C project (IPhone), today I made a big discovery (in a beginners PoV) while working with a singleton. In short if you are accessing a @property with self.someProperty it will use the "(nonatomic, retain)" - or what ever settings you set for this accessor's operation, while if you are directly assigning a value to a (although) synthesized someProperty, for example like this: someProperty = [someClass fun:option]; it will not "retain" it as I had expected before. (due to not using the actual synthesizes accessor via the "." notation)

The reason I am posting this possibly obvious insight is because I have seen few threads on this site debating this exact question, while I was not able to deduct this conclusion until now..

Cheers, Roman

Answer 1

Could you please point at least one thread at "this site" where this obvious fact was not resolved?

This kind of information is not suitable to public here by this way.

Answer 2

Writing this "answer" so I can close the question.

When ever you want to use the synthesized options (set in the header for synthesized property) use the "self.property" notation, otherwise you are working "directly" with the property, you will need to manually put in effect syntesized options (retain etc..).

Hope it helps some one..