Removing retain from implementation crashes application even though property is set to retain

Question

This question follows on from a previous question. However stackoverflow presents me from commenting - like it sometimes prevents me from setting a correct answer on my own question.

Anyway I have some weirdness happening in my application. I have a property:

@property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableArray *hotelList; //I also synthesize it

This is how I am setting the property:

- (void)populateHotelList
{
    SearchWebServiceController *searchWS = [[SearchWebServiceController alloc]init]; 

    //If I remove this retain the App crashes
    hotelList = [[searchWS getHotelsByRegionCode:@"12345" AndByKid:@"12345"] retain]; 

    [searchWS release];
}

However if I remove the retain my application crashes. But according to Apple documentation I should NOT need to retain it?!

This is the method's implementation:

- (NSMutableArray *)getHotelsByRegionCode:(NSString *)regionCode 
                                 AndByKid:(NSString *)Kid
{
    NSMutableArray *result = [[NSMutableArray alloc]init];

    ...

    return [result autorelease];
}

Can anyone please help!

Answer 1

You must retain it because your method returns autorelease object that will be destroyed in the next event loop.

Answer 2

Added the self qualifier and it worked.

self.hotelList = [searchWS getHotelsByRegionCode:@"12345" AndByKid:@"12345"];

Thanks to spbfox!