What is your preferred coding style for dealloc in Objective-C? [closed]

Question

I know that discussions about coding styles tend to end in disaster and endless flame wars, but that’s not what I want to reach. During the last decade I mainly saw two different coding styles for dealloc methods in Objective-C. The first and most common one was to place dealloc at the bottom of the file. This is also the style Apple uses in the Xcode default templates. The logic behind this seems to be that dealloc is invoked when the end of the object approaches, so the end of the file seems to be a nice metaphor.

On the other hand a couple of people tend to put dealloc directly below the @synthesize directives. This has two major disadvantages in my opinion:

1. The top of the file gets cluttered with boring code.
2. It’s harder to find the essential parts in your class, you have to scroll down.

The huge advantage in my opinion is that you have a direct visual connection between properties and the corresponding release message.

The other thing is niling already released variables. While I don’t think that this is necessary, especially in object context where the whole variable gets desctructed after dealloc ends, I tend to also nil the variables. I’m used to do this for variables in function scope, so I’m just consistent with my coding style.

This is how most of my classes look like:

@implementation Bar

@synthesize foo;

- (void)dealloc
{
  [foo release], foo = nil;

  [super dealloc];
}

// Initializers and other methods…

I already mentioned a couple of pros and cons. What do you think about this topic? What is the coding style you use in dealloc and why? Are there other pros and cons I forgot to mention?

I don’t want to start a flame war here. I just want to know what style you use and if you have specific reasons for this or if this doesn’t matter for you in the end.

Answer 1

I like to put the dealloc implementation right below the initializers. That way, when I add a new instance variable, I remember to release it right after I init it.

Also, I find it really helpful to use the #pragma mark directive to make it easier to browse the file. So I "group" the init and dealloc methods together under a heading called "initializers". When browsing the file, having those headings makes it much easier to find what you're looking for without being distracted by the dealloc method.

It might be boring code, but man is it important.