Releasing ivars in Objective-C

OK, looking at this:

Apple docs: Declared Properties

If you scroll down to dealloc it reads:

"Typically in a dealloc method you should release object instance variables directly (rather than invoking a set accessor and passing nil as the parameter), as illustrated in this example:"

- (void)dealloc {
    [property release];
    [super dealloc];
}

"If you are using the modern runtime and synthesizing the i开发者_如何转开发nstance variable, however, you cannot access the instance variable directly, so you must invoke the accessor method:"

- (void)dealloc {
    [self setProperty:nil];
    [super dealloc];
}

Now, I must own at least 15 to 20 books on iOS development. I can't say that I have ever seen any code in these books proposing that one do anything other than:

[someproperty release];

Is there a compelling reason to edit a bunch of files of code that works perfectly well to adopt Apple's recommendation? How about future work? Or, are they pretty much equivalent?

---

Apple's document appears to apply only if you have synthesize-by-default turned on. If you have it turned off, which seems to be the default case, you need @synthesize, which gives you access to variables directly.

Personally, I do:

@synthesize someProperty=_someProperty;

just so I can then do:

- (void)dealloc {
  [_someProperty release];
  [super dealloc];
}

See Jeff LaMarche's blog for more.

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On the modern runtime, you no longer have to declare instance variables for properties, nor do you have to write @synthesize in the implementation. If your code already has the instance variables declared, then there's no reason to replace code that calls release with a call to a set accessor (the first quote you pasted even states that).