Open Radar

 
DUPLICATE OF 36053082

Area:
UIKit

Summary:
Any UITextField objects created are never deallocated causing serious memory overhead in applications that display large numbers of UITextFields over their lifetime. The UITextField does not need to be added to the view hierarchy, simply initializing a text field in a local variable will result in an abandoned object when the reference falls out of scope. 

Steps to Reproduce:
Create a UITextField using the default initializer or through interface builder. Leave the scope that the UITextField instance is valid in so that all references to the object are destroyed or remove the containing view from the view hierarchy and remove all references to the view ensuring the containing view is deallocated. 

Expected Results:
The UITextField is deallocated when references to the instance and it's containing view (if added to the view hierarchy) is deallocated. 

Actual Results:
The UITextField is never deallocated and remains in the application's memory space for the lifetime of the application. 

Version/Build:
iOS 11.2 & 11.2.1 

Configuration:
A sample application has been provided to illustrate the problem. The applications displays an initial view controller containing 4 UIButton's:
1. "Show Text Field Table": Tapping this button displays a table view with 1000 rows. Each row contains 12 UITextFields.
2. "Show Text View Table": Tapping this button displays a table view with 1000 rows. Each row contains 12 UITextViews. 
3. "Show View Controller": Tapping this button displays a view controller containing a single UITextField and a single UITextView. 
4. "Create UITextField": Tapping this button creates a function local UITextField instance, which is not assigned to a variable or added to a view hierarchy.  

The looking at the memory graph during execution of the sample will show that leaving any of the views containing a UITextField results in the text fields being abandoned not deallocating with the containing view controller. Tapping button 4 the application also illustrates that any initialized UITextField is never deallocated. In contrast all instances of UITextView are destroyed when their parent view is deallocated.