//
//  main.m
//  strong_retain_copy
//
//  Created by Christopher Loessl on 25/02/14.
//  Copyright (c) 2014 Christopher Loessl. All rights reserved.
//

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface Person : NSObject

@property (strong, nonatomic) NSString *name;
@property (copy, nonatomic) NSString *nick;

@end

@implementation Person

@end

int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
{

    @autoreleasepool {

        Person *per = [[Person alloc] init];
        NSMutableString *aName = [NSMutableString stringWithString:@"Christopher"];

        // The pointer "per.name" is changed.
        // "per.name" points at the same location as "someName" afterwards
        per.name = aName;

        // This is equal to
        // per.address = [someName copy];
        // Therefore the points are not the same afterwards
        per.nick = aName;

        // Changing "someName" to
        [aName setString:@"hashier"];

        NSLog(@"per.name   : %@", per.name);
        NSLog(@"per.nick   : %@", per.nick);
        NSLog(@"someName   : %@", aName);
        NSLog(@"\nPointer 1: %p\nPointer 2: %p\nPointer 3: %p", per.name, per.nick, aName);

    }
    return 0;
}

You can find this code in my github gists here for easy copy and compile¹.

The code is commented so you should really quickly see what the difference between copy and strong is doing here. By marking the pointer copy the object is copied during assignment and not just the pointer is copied over. For that to work, the NSCopying has the be implemented for that class. Luckily NSString, NSDictionary, and many others already support this protocol.

So now after you know what it makes for a difference with pointers, let’s see when you would want to use one over the other.

Even though per.name is NSString and should not be mutable it is possible to alter it through the 2nd pointer to the same address which is a NSMutableString pointer. This said you can use copy to help you prevent this kind of trap so you might always want to use copy if the immutable class you are using conforms to NSCopying.

On the other hand, if you keep good track of your pointers and you know what you are doing, this could save you time during assignment because the assignment is much faster than copying the whole object². So if you are only using immutable objects pointer assignments can help get some more speed. But remember

Premature optimization is the root of all evil [Knuth]