Editing Weak reference (section)

===Objective-C 2.0===
In [[Objective-C]] 2.0, not only garbage collection, but also [[Reference counting|automatic reference counting]] will be affected by weak references. All variables and properties in the following example are weak.
<syntaxhighlight lang=objc>
@interface WeakRef : NSObject
{
    __weak NSString *str1;
    __unsafe_unretained NSString *str2;
}

@property (nonatomic, weak) NSString *str3;
@property (nonatomic, unsafe_unretained) NSString *str4;

@end
</syntaxhighlight>
The difference between <code>weak</code> (<code>__weak</code>) and <code>unsafe_unretained</code> (<code>__unsafe_unretained</code>) is that when the object the variable pointed to is being deallocated, whether the value of the variable is going to be changed or not. <code>weak</code> ones will be updated to [[Null pointer|<code>nil</code>]] and the <code>unsafe_unretained</code> one will be left unchanged, as a [[dangling pointer]]. The <code>weak</code> references is added to Objective-C since [[Mac OS X Lion|Mac&nbsp;OS&nbsp;X&nbsp;10.7&nbsp;"Lion"]] and [[iOS 5]], together with [[Xcode]] 4.1 (4.2 for iOS), and only when using ARC. Older versions of Mac OS X, iOS, and GNUstep support only <code>unsafe_unretained</code> references as weak ones.