Is a literal NSString autoreleased or does it need to be released?

objective-c cocoa-touch memory-management nsstring literals
Coocoo4Cocoa picture Coocoo4Cocoa · Dec 1, 2008 · Viewed 7.7k times · Source

When creating a string using the following notation:

NSString *foo = @"Bar";

Does one need to release foo? Or is foo autoreleased in this case?

Answer

Ben Gottlieb picture Ben Gottlieb · Dec 1, 2008

Compiler allocated strings (of the format @"STRING") are constant, and so -retain, -release, and -autorelease messages to them are ignored. You don't have to release or autorelease foo in this case (but it won't hurt).

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