Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) is a memory management option for Objective-C provided by the Clang compiler. When compiling Objective-C code with ARC enabled, the compiler will effectively retain, release, or autorelease where appropriate to ensure the object’s lifetime extends through, at least, its last use.
All Objective-C and Objective-C++ code should be compiled with ARC enabled.
ARC emits deterministic memory management code, which leads to fewer leaks or over-releases when compared with manual retain/release. ARC can provide retain/release/autorelease optimizations not available to manually maintained code, improving overall performance. Finally, ARC simplifies writing new code and decreases the burden of maintaining code over time.
Analyzing object lifetime can be complex. With ARC, the compiler ensures correctness of an object’s lifetime, simplifying the maintenance burden. In the following examples, a developer adds a call to scan a newly introduced value with an existing scanner. The update to the non-ARC code yields undefined behavior, while the update to the ARC code behaves correctly.
-fno-objc-arc)NSScanner *scanner = [[NSScanner alloc] initWithString:string];
[scanner scanInt:&value1];
[scanner release]; // bad: premature release of object
...
[scanner scanInt:&value2]; // undefined behavior; potential crash
-f-objc-arc)NSScanner *scanner = [[NSScanner alloc] initWithString:string];
[scanner scanInt:&value1];
...
// ARC guarantees the object is retained for as long as it's used
[scanner scanInt:&value2];