Am I responsible for releasing a UIView's gestureRecognizers in dealloc?

Question

I have attached a UIGestureRecognizer to a UIView. Whose responsibility is it to release this during dealloc?

Specifically:

UITapGestureRecognizer *t = 
[[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self.view action:@selector(tapHandler:)];

[self.view addGestureRecognizer:t];
[t release];

So, self.view currently has sole retention of the gestureRecognizer.

Update I should have been clearer. My question has to do with the views dealloc method. Does the view's superclass handle release of the gestureRecognizer when the view is released. I currently assume that is the case.

Answer 1

The rule of thumb is that you call release whenever you call alloc, new or copy.

Since you called alloc, your code is not over-releasing or leaking anything.

While you could autorelease your gesture recognizer, I would not because explicitly releasing objects, where possible, is better memory management. (Autoreleased objects don't get released until the autorelease pool is drained.)

Answer 2

Your code is correct.

The view takes ownership of the gesture recoginzer with [self.view addGestureRecognizer:t].

You could tidy your code by autoreleasing t when you create it:

UITapGestureRecognizer *t = [[[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self.view action:@selector(tapHandler:)] autorelease];
[self.view addGestureRecognizer:t];

This would mean that all ownership of t is handled in one place thus reducing the potential for introducing problems if the code gets modifed.