Objective-c – potential leak? – analyzer

For example:

[[NSData alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:@"this/path/doesn't/exist/"];
[[NSImage alloc] initWithContentsOfFile:@"unsupportedFormat.sjt"];
[NSImage imageNamed:@"AnImageThatIsntInTheImageCache"];

... and so on. (Note: NSData might throw an exception if the file doesn't exist). There are quite a few areas where returning nil is the expected behaviour when a problem occurs, and because of this it's standard practice to check for nil pretty much all the time, for consistency's sake.

See Allocating and Initializing Objects in the documentation.

Specifically, if you have an error in your initializer, then you release self and return nil:

- init
{
    self = [super init];
    if (self) {
         if (... failed to initialize something in self ...) {
             [self release];
             return nil;
         }
    }
    return self;
}

Now, consider what happens when you call [super init] and it returns nil. The above pattern has already been employed, what was self has been released, and the nil return indicates that the instance is gone. There is no leak and everyone is happy.

This is also a valid pattern (assume that self is an instance of MyClass):

- init
{
    self = [super init];
    if (self) {
        ... normal initialization here ...
    } else {
        self = [MyClass genericInstanceWhenInitializationGoesBad];
        self = [self retain];
    }
    return self;
 }

Since init is expected to return something that is retained (by implication of being chained from +alloc), then that [self retain], though it looks goofy, is actually correct. The self = [self retain] is just being extra defensive in case MyClass overrides retain to do something weird.