Retain Count after function call. should i worry?

Question

i usually dont check the retain count untill the program leaks. But today (i donno y) i checked the retain count and now i am confused.

NSString *strErrorMessage; 
    strErrorMessage= [NSString  stringWithFormat:@"Email and Password are mandatory"];
            NSLog(@"%d", [strErrorMessage retainCount]); // retain count 1
    [objAppDelegate ShowMesssage:strErrorMessage];
    NSLog(@"%d", [strErrorMessage retainCount]); // retain count 3
    return;

I don get this. As i dont alloc strErrorMessage, i don have to release it rite?

who has the owner ship of strErrorMessage.

-(void) ShowMesssage: (NSString *)strError
 {
 UIAlertView *alertError = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:strTitle   message:strError delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil];
 [alertError show];
 [alertError release];
   }

Do i have to release strError here?(i thought no, but what abt the retain count 3).

Answer 1

Checking the retain count generally isn't a good way to debug memory leaks, so I wouldn't worry too much about it as long as you understand where you're allocating/releasing memory. Here you're autoreleasing the error message and manually releasing the alertError so I think you're okay.

I would guess that the two extra retains are in the UIAlertView. It's going to have to retain the error message string at least once to work correctly. The second retain is probably just some internal implementation detail.