这里有一些很好的答案。但是最近对Swift实现弱引用方式的改变应该会改变每个人对弱self和无主self的使用决策。以前，如果你需要最好的性能，使用无主的自我优于弱自我，只要你能确定自我永远不会为nil，因为访问无主的自我比访问弱自我快得多。

但是Mike Ash已经记录了Swift如何更新弱变量的实现以使用侧边表，以及这如何极大地提高弱自我性能。

https://mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2017-09-22-swift-4-weak-references.html

Now that there isn't a significant performance penalty to weak self, I believe we should default to using it going forward. The benefit of weak self is that it's an optional, which makes it far easier to write more correct code, it's basically the reason Swift is such a great language. You may think you know which situations are safe for the use of unowned self, but my experience reviewing lots of other developers code is, most don't. I've fixed lots of crashes where unowned self was deallocated, usually in situations where a background thread completes after a controller is deallocated.

bug和崩溃是编程中最耗时、最痛苦、最昂贵的部分。尽最大努力编写正确的代码并避免它们。我建议制定一条规则，永远不要强制打开可选项，永远不要使用无主self而不是弱self。你不会失去任何东西，失去时代的力量和无主的自我其实是安全的。但是，您将从消除难以发现和调试的崩溃和错误中获益良多。

根据Apple-doc

弱引用总是可选类型，并且是自动的 当它们引用的实例被释放时变为nil。 如果捕获的引用永远不会变成nil，那么它应该始终被捕获为无主引用，而不是弱引用

的例子,

    // if my response can nil use  [weak self]
      resource.request().onComplete { [weak self] response in
      guard let strongSelf = self else {
        return
      }
      let model = strongSelf.updateModel(response)
      strongSelf.updateUI(model)
     }

    // Only use [unowned self] unowned if guarantees that response never nil  
      resource.request().onComplete { [unowned self] response in
      let model = self.updateModel(response)
      self.updateUI(model)
     }

我想我应该为视图控制器添加一些具体的例子。很多解释，不仅仅是在Stack Overflow上，真的很好，但我用现实世界的例子工作得更好(@drewag在这方面有一个很好的开始):

If you have a closure to handle a response from a network requests use weak, because they are long lived. The view controller could close before the request completes so self no longer points to a valid object when the closure is called. If you have closure that handles an event on a button. This can be unowned because as soon as the view controller goes away, the button and any other items it may be referencing from self goes away at the same time. The closure block will also go away at the same time. class MyViewController: UIViewController { @IBOutlet weak var myButton: UIButton! let networkManager = NetworkManager() let buttonPressClosure: () -> Void // closure must be held in this class. override func viewDidLoad() { // use unowned here buttonPressClosure = { [unowned self] in self.changeDisplayViewMode() // won't happen after vc closes. } // use weak here networkManager.fetch(query: query) { [weak self] (results, error) in self?.updateUI() // could be called any time after vc closes } } @IBAction func buttonPress(self: Any) { buttonPressClosure() } // rest of class below. }

import UIKit

class ViewController: UIViewController {

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        // Do any additional setup after loading the view.

        let storyboard = UIStoryboard(name: "Main", bundle: nil)
        let controller = storyboard.instantiateViewController(withIdentifier: "AnotherViewController")
        self.navigationController?.pushViewController(controller, animated: true)

    }

}



import UIKit
class AnotherViewController: UIViewController {

    var name : String!

    deinit {
        print("Deint AnotherViewController")
    }

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        print(CFGetRetainCount(self))

        /*
            When you test please comment out or vice versa

         */

//        // Should not use unowned here. Because unowned is used where not deallocated. or gurranted object alive. If you immediate click back button app will crash here. Though there will no retain cycles
//        clouser(string: "") { [unowned self] (boolValue)  in
//            self.name = "some"
//        }
//


//
//        // There will be a retain cycle. because viewcontroller has a strong refference to this clouser and as well as clouser (self.name) has a strong refferennce to the viewcontroller. Deint AnotherViewController will not print
//        clouser(string: "") { (boolValue)  in
//            self.name = "some"
//        }
//
//


//        // no retain cycle here. because viewcontroller has a strong refference to this clouser. But clouser (self.name) has a weak refferennce to the viewcontroller. Deint AnotherViewController will  print. As we forcefully made viewcontroller weak so its now optional type. migh be nil. and we added a ? (self?)
//
//        clouser(string: "") { [weak self] (boolValue)  in
//            self?.name = "some"
//        }


        // no retain cycle here. because viewcontroller has a strong refference to this clouser. But clouser nos refference to the viewcontroller. Deint AnotherViewController will  print. As we forcefully made viewcontroller weak so its now optional type. migh be nil. and we added a ? (self?)

        clouser(string: "") {  (boolValue)  in
            print("some")
            print(CFGetRetainCount(self))

        }

    }


    func clouser(string: String, completion: @escaping (Bool) -> ()) {
        // some heavy task
        DispatchQueue.main.asyncAfter(deadline: .now() + 5.0) {
            completion(true)
        }

    }

}

如果你不确定[无主自我]，那么使用[弱自我]

以下是来自苹果开发者论坛的精彩语录:

无主vs无主(安全)vs无主(不安全)

unowned(safe) is a non-owning reference that asserts on access that the object is still alive. It's sort of like a weak optional reference that's implicitly unwrapped with x! every time it's accessed. unowned(unsafe) is like __unsafe_unretained in ARC—it's a non-owning reference, but there's no runtime check that the object is still alive on access, so dangling references will reach into garbage memory. unowned is always a synonym for unowned(safe) currently, but the intent is that it will be optimized to unowned(unsafe) in -Ofast builds when runtime checks are disabled.

无主vs弱

unowned actually uses a much simpler implementation than weak. Native Swift objects carry two reference counts, and unowned references bump the unowned reference count instead of the strong reference count. The object is deinitialized when its strong reference count reaches zero, but it isn't actually deallocated until the unowned reference count also hits zero. This causes the memory to be held onto slightly longer when there are unowned references, but that isn't usually a problem when unowned is used because the related objects should have near-equal lifetimes anyway, and it's much simpler and lower-overhead than the side-table based implementation used for zeroing weak references.

更新:在现代Swift中，weak内部使用与un物主相同的机制。所以这个比较是不正确的，因为它比较了Objective-C的弱和Swift的unonwed。

原因

What is the purpose of keeping the memory alive after owning references reach 0? What happens if code attempts to do something with the object using an unowned reference after it is deinitialized? The memory is kept alive so that its retain counts are still available. This way, when someone attempts to retain a strong reference to the unowned object, the runtime can check that the strong reference count is greater than zero in order to ensure that it is safe to retain the object. What happens to owning or unowned references held by the object? Is their lifetime decoupled from the object when it is deinitialized or is their memory also retained until the object is deallocated after the last unowned reference is released? All resources owned by the object are released as soon as the object's last strong reference is released, and its deinit is run. Unowned references only keep the memory alive—aside from the header with the reference counts, its contents is junk.

兴奋,是吗?

如果self可以在闭包中为nil，请使用[weak self]。

如果self在闭包中永远不会为nil，请使用[无主的self]。

Apple Swift文档中有一个很好的章节，用图片解释了在闭包中使用strong、weak和u主的区别:

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/AutomaticReferenceCounting.html