Why is EXC_BAD_ACCESS so unhelpful?
- by Dustin
First let me say I come from a background in Flash/AS3, which I realize is not as strict about most things as iPhone/Objective-C.
I suspect my question actually applies to AS3 as well, but let me ask it as pertaining to Obj-c. Why is the error EXC_BAD_ACCESS, and others like it, so unhelpful? I realize that it normally means mismanagement of memory somewhere, but why can't it tell you more about the problem. For instance why doesn't it say "EXC_BAD_ACCESS, you tried to pass pointer suchAndSuch on line 123, however you're an idiot, because you released it on line 69 so it's not available anymore"?
I realize I can use the debugger to get more clues about where my error occurred, but many times this is only marginally helpful. For instance sometimes none of the messages in the stack/thread/whatever are even my code. Other times it is my code but on the top of the stack will be a message that has 4+ parameters, ok thanks debugger you narrowed it down to 4 possible pointers by why can't you just tell me which one!?
I'm guessing there's just some fundamental explanation that I missed because of the background I came from, not needing to worry about memory and such. Although there is an error that can happen a lot in AS3 development that is equally mysterious and along the same lines. "Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference" which almost always means a variable you were expecting to be holding something is actually null. Why doesn't it tell me WHICH variable?!
