更新11/2016

我写了一篇关于扩展这个答案的文章(通过研究SIL来理解ARC做了什么)，请在这里查看。

原来的答案

前面的答案并没有给出什么时候使用一种而不是另一种的直接规则，所以让我补充一些东西。

无主或弱的讨论归结为变量和引用它的闭包的生命周期问题。

场景

你可以有两个可能的场景:

The closure have the same lifetime of the variable, so the closure will be reachable only until the variable is reachable. The variable and the closure have the same lifetime. In this case you should declare the reference as unowned. A common example is the [unowned self] used in many example of small closures that do something in the context of their parent and that not being referenced anywhere else do not outlive their parents. The closure lifetime is independent from the one of the variable, the closure could still be referenced when the variable is not reachable anymore. In this case you should declare the reference as weak and verify it's not nil before using it (don't force unwrap). A common example of this is the [weak delegate] you can see in some examples of closure referencing a completely unrelated (lifetime-wise) delegate object.

实际使用

那么，大多数时候你会/应该使用哪种呢?

引用乔·格罗夫在推特上的话:

无主更快，并且允许不可变性和非可选性。 如果你不需要弱，就不要用它。

你会在这里找到更多关于无主内部工作的信息。

*通常也称为无主(safe)，表示在访问无主引用之前执行运行时检查(导致无效引用崩溃)。

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)
     }

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

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]

unowned is similar to weak they don't a retained object from being destroyed, but weak variables turned to nil when the object its a reference to no longer exists, which we can handle with the normal checking of nils, unowned will just become garbage, you can't tell they are no longer garbage and using them will crash. The problem with weak is if an object has references to it by weak variables, when its destroyed, it has to go through every reference to it and set that variable to nil, this clearly is going to be expensive, using unowned instead is going just crash and finding this kind of bug is going to be difficult. One place to use unowned is if you are creating some carefully contained datatype, which has a clear interface, and its internals are not directly accessible, for you implementation it may be useful to have lots of circular references but that are self contained, you can used unowned references to let you break those circular references, with out the expense of weak variables, for example you may have a node tree, and each node needs has to have a reference to its parent, deleting a node is going to delete all its children, so there is no point of all the children having to have all there parent references set to nil.

如果以上都说不通:

博士tl;

就像一个隐式打开的可选选项，如果你能保证 引用在它的使用点不会为nil，使用无主。 如果不是，那么你应该使用weak。

解释:

我检索了以下在:弱无主链接。从我收集到的，无主self不能为nil，但弱self可以，并且无主self可以导致悬空指针…这在Objective-C中是臭名昭著的。希望能有所帮助

“无主弱引用和无主引用行为相似，但并不相同。”

Unowned references, like weak references, do not increase the retain count of the object being referred. However, in Swift, an unowned reference has the added benefit of not being an Optional. This makes them easier to manage rather than resorting to using optional binding. This is not unlike Implicitly Unwrapped Optionals . In addition, unowned references are non-zeroing. This means that when the object is deallocated, it does not zero out the pointer. This means that use of unowned references can, in some cases, lead to dangling pointers. For you nerds out there that remember the Objective-C days like I do, unowned references map to unsafe_unretained references.

这就是让人有点困惑的地方。

弱引用和无主引用都不会增加保留计数。

它们都可以用来打破保留循环。那么我们什么时候使用它们呢?

苹果公司的文件显示:

“当一个引用在其生命周期的某个时间点变成nil是有效的时，就使用弱引用。相反，当你知道在初始化过程中设置的引用永远不会为nil时，使用无主引用。”