Alex Rivera | Logout

Use of alloc init instead of new

Asked 2009-04-05T23:26:06.450
359

Learning Objective-C and reading sample code, I notice that objects are usually created using this method:

SomeObject *myObject = [[SomeObject alloc] init];

instead of:

SomeObject *myObject = [SomeObject new];

Is there a reason for this, as I have read that they are equivalent?

objective-c oop
Edit
Report

1 Answer

52

+new is equivalent to +alloc/-init in Apple's NSObject implementation. It is highly unlikely that this will ever change, but depending on your paranoia level, Apple's documentation for +new appears to allow for a change of implementation (and breaking the equivalency) in the future. For this reason, because "explicit is better than implicit" and for historical continuity, the Objective-C community generally avoids +new. You can, however, usually spot the recent Java comers to Objective-C by their dogged use of +new.

answered 2009-04-06T02:02:59.740

Your Answer