Lazy initialisation and retain cycle

Question

While using lazy initialisers, is there a chance of having retain cycles?

In a blog post and many other places [unowned self] is seen

class Person {

    var name: String

    lazy var personalizedGreeting: String = {
        [unowned self] in
        return "Hello, \(self.name)!"
        }()

    init(name: String) {
        self.name = name
    }
}

I tried this

class Person {

    var name: String

    lazy var personalizedGreeting: String = {
        //[unowned self] in
        return "Hello, \(self.name)!"
        }()

    init(name: String) {
        print("person init")
        self.name = name
    }

    deinit {
        print("person deinit")
    }
}

Used it like this

//...
let person = Person(name: "name")
print(person.personalizedGreeting)
//..

And found that "person deinit" was logged.

So it seems there are no retain cycles. As per my knowledge when a block captures self and when this block is strongly retained by self, there is a retain cycle. This case seems similar to a retain cycle but actually it is not.

Answer 1

I tried this [...]

lazy var personalizedGreeting: String = { return self.name }()

it seems there are no retain cycles

Correct.

The reason is that the immediately applied closure {}() is considered @noescape. It does not retain the captured self.

For reference: Joe Groff's tweet.