Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) is a compiler feature that provides automatic memory management of Objective-C and Swift objects.
Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) is a technology introduced in LLVM 3.0 (which ships with Xcode 4.2) for managing memory in Objective-C. Swift also uses ARC. This method removes the need for much of the code previously required for manual memory management (MRR) of objects in Objective-C (such as manually calling release) and introduces new memory management qualifiers (namely strong and weak). ARC is a compile-time feature that transparently incorporates the appropriate reference-counting memory management calls into the final application. Like manual reference counting, there is no run-time garbage collection.
References:
Objective-C Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) is a full specification for this technology can be found on the LLVM website
Transitioning to ARC Release Notes is Apple's discussion about adopting ARC
The Swift Programming Language - Automatic Reference Counting
See Also
- For the Arc programming language, see arc-lisp.
