Retain and release confusion?

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memory management objective c - returning objects from methods

I have a confusion with retaining object. If I have an function that will return an object like this:

- (object) functionA {

   NSObject* o = [[object alloc] init];

   return o;
}

The object returned will have retain count of 1.... But is this best practice to do this or shall i put autorelease first and let the caller retain the object.

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/710288/where-are-the-best-explanations-of-memory-management-for-iphone and the [official Memory Management rules](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/General/Conceptual/DevPedia-CocoaCore/MemoryManagement.html). — jscs, Mar 19 '12 at 23:02

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 19 '12 at 23:00

In that case you'd return an autoreleased object. The NARC rule states that any method that does not include the words 'new', 'alloc', 'retain' or 'copy' should return a non-owning reference. The method functionA includes none of those words in its name.

Retain and release confusion?

1 Answers1