Confusing about memory management on IOS - ios

Question

There's a little bit uncommon situation in my app, that is,
I have to reload some retain properties everytime when the view is going to appear,
the code looks like this:
// .h
#property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *myData;
// .m
#synthesize myData;
- (void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated {
... // get FetchRequest and so on
self.myData = [self.context executeFetchRequest:request error:&error]; // Line 1
[super viewWillAppear:animated];
}
- (void)viewDidUnload {
self.myData = nil;
[super viewDidUnload];
}
- (void)dealloc {
[myData release]; // Line 2
[super dealloc];
}
there are several points:
1st. as you see, the property "myData" is retain, so I think every I set some object for it, it would automatically retain that object?
2nd. I have to reload "myData" everytime the view will appear, just like the code of Line 1 above.
3rd. Since it is a retain property, I have to release it myself correctly.
Now, question is, do I correctly managed the memory without any leaking of "myData" using the codes above?
If the view would appear many times before it is dealloc, (like push in a further view in a UINavigationController and pop out for several times),
then myData would retain some object more than once, but I only release it in the dealloc for 1 once in Line 2, so is that ok?
But if I add this method the to viewController,which I think is more safe for avoiding memory leaks:
- (void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
self.myData = nil;
[myData release];
[super viewWillDisappear:animated];
}
- (void)dealloc {
// [myData release]; // don't release it here.
[super dealloc];
}
my app would crash after one or two times I push in and pop out the view,
So which one is really wrong?
Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

You are not only releasing it in Line 2, it will be also released in Line 1 when replaced as well as in viewDidUnload, so your code on top is just fine. The key is that
self.myData = anything;
is expanded to
[self->myData release];
self->myData = [anything retain];
so by assigning anything (including nil) you are already calling release implicitly. You could in fact replace Line 2 with self.myData = nil; to have never to call release since you don't have any explicit retain.

Answer 2

.h
#property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *myData;
.m
#synthesize myData;
By including these lines in your code a setter and getter is created for your property myData. The setter generated at run time for objects looks something like this,
- (void)setMyData: (id)newValue
{
if (myData != newValue)
{
[myData release];
myData = newValue;
[myData retain];
}
}
The total effect is that whenever you access the property by appending self in front you are actually calling the setters and getters. So the following two lines are the exact same.
self.myData = nil;
[self setMyData:nil];
So your original code was already correct.