Re: Leopard Properties and NSMutable Array

FROM : Bill Bumgarner
DATE : Sun Jan 06 20:05:34 2008

On Jan 6, 2008, at 6:55 AM, Jonathan Dann wrote:

> What I really wanted was the ability to declare the mutable array as 
> a property as a I've really grown to like the 'dot syntax'.  So here 
> is the solution that seems to have worked:


The dot syntax works fine for non-property based attributes. I.e. you 
could drop the @property declaration below and all your code -- dot or 
no dot -- would continue to work the same.

What would change, though, is that the additional metadata provided by 
the @property declaration would no longer be available at runtime for 
introspection purposes.  At this time, there are few, if any, bits of 
code that use that metadata.

I expect that'll change in the future.

> - (NSMutableArray *)array;
> {
>     return array;
> }


At the least, that should be...

   return [array autorelease];

... unless you have GC turned on (which the use of retain/release in 
the rest of your code indicates that you likely do not).

Given the overall defensiveness of your code, you might consider 
returning a copy of your array, mutable or otherwise.  As it stands, 
any client can grab a reference to the internal storage of your class 
and change it.

   return [[array copy] autorelease];

> In my main.m I can then call [array addObject:[NSString string]]; 
> without an error or compiler warnings.
>
> I think I could pass the setter an NSArray too as NSArray conforms 
> to NSMutableCopying.  Is there anything that I missed, could this go 
> horribly wrong somewhere?


Nope -- that will work fine.

b.bum