Why does a declared property use both retain and readonly?

Question

I've noticed that some of Apple's examples include both a retain and readonly modifier on properties. What's the point of including retain if no setter gets generated when we're using the readonly modifier?

Example: @property (retain, readonly) NSString *title; from the AnimatedTableView sample.

Answer 1

Or, more specifically, (readonly, retain) enables a pattern like this:

Foo.h:

@interface StuffHolder:NSObject @property(readonly, retain) MyStuff *stuff; @end 

Foo.m:

@interface StuffHolder() @property(readwrite, retain) MyStuff *stuff; @end  @implementation StuffHolder @synthesize stuff; @end 

The end result is a property that is publicly readonly while being readwrite within the implementation and for whom both setter and getter are synthesized automatically by the compiler.

A warning could be generated in the case of no (readwrite, retain) override in the class extension -- something akin to statement without an effect -- but it would be more confusing than beneficial. There are also a whole slew of different edge cases across the combinations that would equally warrant a warning, but don't really indicate an actual problem. The decision was made to largely accept the various patterns without complaint for simplicity's sake (since they aren't correctness issues).

Answer 2

You can include a second, private readwrite declaration in a class extension. The memory management scheme for all references needs to match IIRC, so you get silliness like "readonly, retain".