Kas saaksite selgitada, mida tähendab iOS-i automaatne mälu haldamise mehhanism ARC?

ARC (Automated Reference Counting) is a memory management mechanism in iOS that automatically tracks and manages the lifecycle of objects. Instead of manually calling retain/release, the compiler inserts these calls for you, increasing or decreasing the reference count of the object.

When the reference count of an object reaches zero, the object is automatically released from memory. This helps prevent memory leaks and simplifies development.

Example:

class Person {
    var name: String
    init(name: String) {
        self.name = name
    }
}

var person1: Person? = Person(name: "Ivan")
var person2 = person1 // reference count increases
person1 = nil // decreases the count
person2 = nil // count becomes 0, object is released

It is important to pay attention to cyclic references (retain cycles), which ARC cannot automatically resolve, for example, by using weak or unowned references.