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When I started developing Swift code I wasn't that experienced handling memory leaks, so it take some time to me to figure out that what is a retain cycle, what is ARC, and why I should use weak or unowned inside my closures that was creating those retain cycles.

By default I always add this piece of code in closures that is referencing self:

class MyController: UIViewController {
    var myClosure: (Data?, Error?)?

    override viewDidLoad() {
        self.myClosure = { [weak self] (data, err) in 
            guard let self = self else { return }
            self.present(someVC, animated: true)
        }
    }
}

That code is something very common and using this weak modifier and also unwrapping self is something that is almost a default code.

That makes me question. If I have to always add a weak self in code that is referencing self and not allowing the class to be deinit WHY Apple don't make it a default behaviour on the language so we don't need to have this code repeating everywhere on our code base?

chr0x
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    The UX of this definitely still has some room for improvement, but fundamentally, automating this would require hardcoding into the compiler an assumption about what should happen when `self` is `nil`. In your case, you just no-op. That's probably the most common valid case, but I imagine there are others. – Alexander Dec 03 '19 at 20:44

1 Answers1

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You don't have to always use weak self when referencing self in a closure.

But in this particular case you do have to and it was explained here

Oleg Piruyan
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