Arc migration with bad naming standards

Question

I am dealing with a code base where naming standards are usually ignored. Thus, some classes have methods that return objects with a reference number of 1, even if the method name does not match NARC. Fantastic stuff.

I would like to convert the project to use automatic reference counting, but I'm a little nervous about the fact that the NARC naming standards were generally ignored. Does anyone know if ARC correctly relies on NARC naming standards?

Thanks,

Sean

Answer 1

ARC relies on naming conventions to work correctly. However...

If you used ObjC objects, then it will usually "work" if you only have ARC code. For example, if you have a method like:

- (id)something { return [[Something alloc] init]; } 

This is incorrect (in code other than ARC), but ARC will balance it by adding an extra autorelease . In fact, the above is the correct ARC code, so this is normal.

My suggestion, if this is almost all of ObjC code, is to automatically convert to ARC and then run a static analyzer. The problem can be much less than what you fear if it is a fairly simple code that just has bad names.

If this is a very shortened Core Foundation code, things are a little more complicated. Then I would recommend that you first run the static analyzer and get the right to naming right before converting. Fortunately, naming conventions are something that a static parser is very good at.

Answer 2

I had to convert several projects to ARC and so far have never encountered any problems directly due to naming conventions.

In fact, the transformation is really straightforward, so when I fully understand your state of mind regarding the code that you have to deal with, I would not worry too much.

Until now, I have never encountered any serious difficult situation during the conversion, since the code to be converted was primarily correct and somehow understandable.

In fact, using ARC, I believe that the problem is no problem, like any other language with built-in GC - on memory issues, of course!

In the worst case scenario, you can always run a static analyzer, but even this is rarely required at present with ARC.

Probably the most critical situation is discussed here: What leaks does automatic reference counting in Objective-C not prevent or minimize?