Re: Question about memory management

[David Chisnall]

On 7 Jun 2013, at 09:30, "Graham Lee" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Should this be wrapped in if(self == [Singleton class])? I've seen that used 
> to guard against this +initialize being called multiple times when a subclass 
> is used that doesn't override the method.

Good catch.  The answer is... maybe.  Typically, singletons don't support 
subclassing, because the semantics are a bit interesting.  It's often better, 
if you have a singleton that may want extending, to provide some delegate 
mechanism.  Or, alternatively, a way of setting the singleton instance to use.

If you expect subclasses, then you need to be a bit more clever to ensure that 
everything that tries to access the object gets the subclass version.  
Traditionally, you'd do that by adding a category on the superclass that 
replaced +sharedInstance with a call to your replacement.  If two different 
libraries try to do this, however, the behaviour is undefined.

David

-- Sent from my Apple II