Is garbage collection supported for iPhone applications?

Question

Does the iPhone support garbage collection? If it does, then what are the alternate ways to perform the operations that are performaed using +alloc and -init combination:

NSXMLParser *xmlParser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithData:xmlData];
UIImage *originalImage = [[UIImage alloc] initWithData:data];
detailViewController = [[[DetailViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"DetailView bundle:[NSBundle mainBundle]] autorelease];

... and other commands. Thank you in advance for any help or direction that you can provide.

Answer 1

No. Garbage collection is too large an overhead for the limited battery life etc. on the device.

You must program always with an alloc/release pattern in mind.

NSXMLParser *xmlParser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithData:xmlData];
...
[xmlParser release];

or (not suitable for every situation)

NSXMLParser *xmlParser [[[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithData:xmlData] autorelease];

Hope this helps!