Leaks and ObjectAlloc in Instruments

Question

I've got a substantially large app which is completely clean with regard to memory leaks (in Instruments), but grows by 2-5 objects / button push (the "AllAlocations" line item in Instruments).
It seems the NSMutable Object Instance Variables are responsible as if I comment them out, the Object growth stops.
As much as I try though I cannot stop the Object count from growing as long as the NSMutableStrings are there.
Here's the setup and use:
@interface myOBjectModule {
NSMutableString * myMutableString;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSMutableString * myMutableString;
@end
....and in the implementation
@impementation myObjectModule
@synthesis myMutableString;
then its 1st use is as follows:
-(void) appendCharacterToyMutableString: (int) aCharacter {
NSString * wert;
wert = [[NSString alloc] initWithString: [myMutableString
stringByAppendingFormat: @"%c", aCharacter]];
[self setMyMutableString: wert];
[wert release];
So I'm hoping someone can enlighten me on "Instruments" and ObjectAlloc growth.
I've tried 'copy' and 'assign' in the @property, and other variations of append withformat....and so on. Nothing seems to matter unless I take out the '[self setMyMutableString: wert];' statement.
tia - Rick

Answer 1

The 'setMyMutableString' method is a standard (canned) accessor method spawned by @synthesize. To verify, I wrote my own to try it, with proper release->assign sequencing and the results are identical.
The answer to your question: "why do you use an NSMutableString, but then use it like an immutable one...." is that "wert" really represents an intermediate value on which more operations are performed before it is finally concatenated onto the back of the orginal myMutableString.
Its not an absolute representation of my code, but it does exhibit the same problem.
The code is completely clean from a memory-leak perspective (according to instruments).
============================
I think though, here is the real question:
It seems like the object growth on the top-line (* All Allocations *) is coming from various General Block-xx lines, not from any of the CFxxxxx lines (like CFString etc).
Does anyone have any insight into what to look for in the ObjAlloc tool that indicates real problems? The objects that I can control DO NOT seem to grow, only the General Block-xx objects.
-- thanks again rick