reusing a pointer - help

[Chuckmist3r]

This is the last roadblock in my development, and hopefully with this question answered I will be able to push my app through to the testing/debugging phase.

I need to reuse a pointer I have declared in my header file, after allocating, and initializing the pointer, I now need to initialize the pointer without releasing it, I am not sure on how to do this, or if it is even possible, but I (in theory) need to de-initialize the pointer, than re-initialize with a different pathForResource in this case.

Could you please tell me how to do this? I have gone through apple's developer website, and that's about as much help as reading nutrition facts to find the information I need.

Thank you for your insight,
Charles

[RLScott]

You never release a pointer. You only release the thing it is pointing at. When you say:

  [str release];

where str is declared as NSString *str; then you are actually releasing the NSString that str is pointing at. If two pointer point to the same object, such as:

  NSString *str1;
  NSString *str2;
   str1 = [[NSString alloc] initWithString @"Bob"];
   str2 = str1;

then if you did a [str1 release], that is the same thing as a [str2 release]; Only the object is released, not the pointer.

So would you like to rephrase your question and show what you are trying to do?

[Chuckmist3r]

Actually, what you just said led to me thinking, I think you inadvertently answered my question. My problem was with my pointer itself, instead of the path it was looking at, I had the instance pointer acting as a local pointer, so when trying to modify the pointer, I was changing everything connected to it (as to be expected).

If you answered it on purpose or not, is a mystery, but Thank you very much,
Charles

Edit:
Just as I thought, after reading your code post, I decided to create a local pointer, so that I can set it equal to my instance pointer. After I edited my code, it all worked and fell into place, thank you again.