Correct approach for checking memory allocations in Objective C

Question

I'm wondering what would be the correct approach after executing a command that allocates memory in Objective C (I'm mainly referring to iOS apps). My dilemma comes from the fact that checking for the success of failure of a memory allocation operation adds lots of lines of code, while wondering whether this is at all useful. Moreover, sometimes memory allocations are obvious, such as using 'alloc', but sometimes they are taking place behind the scenes. And even if we check each and every allocation - when we find it failed - there isn't much we could actually do. So maybe the correct approach is to just let it fail and have the app crash? Take a look at this code:

// Explicit memory allocation
NSArray a1 = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:someObj, nil];
if (!a1) {
  // Should we make this check at all? Is there really what to do?
}

// Implicit memory allocation
NSArray a2 = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:someObj, nil];
if (!a2) {
  // should we make this check at all? Is there really what to do?
}

What in your opinion would be the correct approach? Check or not check for allocation failures? iOS developers out there - how have you handled it in your apps?

Answer 1

Fantasy: Every memory allocation would be checked and any failure would be reported to the user in a friendly fashion, the app would shut down cleanly, a bug report would be sent, you could fix it and the next version would be perfect [in that one case].

Reality: By the time something as trivial as arrayWithObjects: fails, your app was dead long, long, ago. There is no recovery in this case. It is quite likely that the frameworks have already failed an allocation and have already corrupted your app's state.

Furthermore, once something as basic as arrayWithObjects: has failed, you aren't going to be able to tell the user anyway. There is no way that you are going to be able to reliably put a dialog on screen without further allocations.

However, the failure happened much further before your app failed an allocation. Namely, your app should have received a memory warning and should have responded by (a) persisting state so no customer data is lost and (b) freeing up as much memory as possible to avoid catastrophic failure.

Still, a memory warning is the last viable line of defense in the war on memory usage.

Your first assault on memory reduction is in the design and development process. You should consider memory use from the start of the application development process and you must optimize for memory use as you polish your application for publication. Use the Allocations Instrument (see this Heapshot analysis write-up I did a bit ago -- it is highly applicable) and justify the existence of every major consumer of memory.