NSCopying Protocol Reference

Overview

The NSCopying protocol declares a method for providing functional copies of an object. The exact meaning of “copy” can vary from class to class, but a copy must be a functionally independent object with values identical to the original at the time the copy was made. A copy produced with NSCopying is implicitly retained by the sender, who is responsible for releasing it.

NSCopying declares one method, copyWithZone:, but copying is commonly invoked with the convenience method copy. The copy method is defined for all objects inheriting from NSObject and simply invokes copyWithZone: with the default zone.

Your options for implementing this protocol are as follows:

• Implement NSCopying using alloc and init... in classes that don’t inherit copyWithZone:.

• Implement NSCopying by invoking the superclass’s copyWithZone: when NSCopying behavior is inherited. If the superclass implementation might use the NSCopyObject function, make explicit assignments to pointer instance variables for retained objects.

• Implement NSCopying by retaining the original instead of creating a new copy when the class and its contents are immutable.

If a subclass inherits NSCopying from its superclass and declares additional instance variables, the subclass has to override copyWithZone: to properly handle its own instance variables, invoking the superclass’s implementation first.