Re: NSDate Question
Re: NSDate Question
- Subject: Re: NSDate Question
- From: Alastair Houghton <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 17:48:45 +0000
On 8 Dec 2006, at 17:26, Sean McBride wrote:
On 2006-12-08 09:19, Roland Torres said:
Noob question here.
Is doing:
myDate = [aMyDate copy];
preferable to doing:
myDate = [aMyDate retain];
This could become a long discussion... You might want to google
'accessor patterns'.
But ask yourself: "Do I want the value, or the actual object?" For
the
former use 'copy' for the latter use 'retain'. I would think with a
date, it's the value that's more interesting.
Sean's quite right. You should -copy if you want the value and -
retain if you want the object.
It makes a difference when people give your method mutable objects;
using -retain rather than -copy can be a mistake in that case,
because you might end up with an object whose value subsequently
changes.
(I'm not sure I'm 100% consistent with this myself, but usually it's
*my* code that's calling the methods so I know whether or not I'm
giving my methods mutable objects. If you're writing library code
for others to use, it's arguably more important.)
Kind regards,
Alastair.
--
http://alastairs-place.net
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