Explain iOS ARC and avoid retain cycles

Q: Explain iOS ARC and avoid retain cycles

This question evaluates a candidate's understanding of iOS memory management under ARC, covering compile-time reference counting, ownership qualifiers (strong/weak/unowned), common retain-cycle sources and mitigation, autorelease pools, and use of Xcode memory-debugging tools.

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Question

iOS Memory Management (ARC)

You have 10 minutes to explain iOS memory management under ARC.

Cover the following:

How ARC manages object lifetime (what it does at compile time, when deallocation happens).
The meaning and typical use cases of strong / weak / unowned references.
Retain cycles :
- Common places they occur (e.g., closures/blocks, delegate patterns, timers, notification observers).
- How to prevent and break cycles.
What an autorelease pool is and when you might need @autoreleasepool { ... } .
How you would debug memory issues (leaks, unexpectedly retained objects) using Xcode tools.

Assume Swift + UIKit/SwiftUI context unless you state otherwise.

Explain iOS ARC and avoid retain cycles

Quick Overview

iOS Memory Management (ARC)

Solution

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