Right now, I’m desperately trying to understand what is the use of retaining objects. Since it’s something so obviously basic knowledge, there must be some reason to implement it. I want my object to “hold” an instance variable created in a method so this variable can be used in another method of this same object.
For example, I have an object, call it Obj… Obj has two methods : func1 and func2… func1 creates an object, say, a General/NSArray called myArray… And retains it… I need myArray in func2 too… But when func2 tries to access myArray, I get this error message…
'myArray' undeclared (first use in this function)
So, I thought : well, I have to declare it in the .h of Obj… But then, I say to myself : “Why would I get in the trouble of retaining/releasing myArray when I could just declare it in the header and get access to it in any method of Obj ?
I must be missing some very important notion about Objective-C. If anyone can bright light on me, I would be grateful… Thank you…
– Trax
I answered him. –General/DustinVoss
any chance of putting something here for the next time someone comes across this?
For future reference, you need to declare the array in the header file. Do this inside the brackets, just by saying something like this.
General/NSArray *myArray;
Now you can access it anywhere from within the m file. If you need to access it from elsewhere, make a method which returns the array.
–General/CharlieMiller
I found General/RetainingAndReleasing helpful.
I just had an article published (yes, I expect to be talking about this for quite some time :) ) on the subject of memory management. Hopefully it’ll help you figure it out. Here’s the URL:
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/06/10/memory_mgmt.html?page=1
– General/RobRix