Brian wrote:

> GetControlData() ( an exception I cited ) performs many functions depending on which selector is used, and many of those selectors do NOT return on object that needs to be released. In many cases GetControlData() simply does a 'get' and conforms to rule #2.

In addition to Brian's comments, I suspect GetControlData predates the get/create/copy rules and was probably the only way to grab a control's text until HIViewCopyText was introduced in 10.4.

bw