I have several apps in my app that can become nil at some point and I have methods that in theory are used to put these objects to nil.

But, if I try to put to nil an object that does not exist, the app will crash.

for example...

[object1 release];
object1 = nil;

//... and after that

[object removeFromSuperview]; // this will crash

Then I thought, why not testing to see if the object exists before removing...

if (object1 != nil)
 [object removeFromSuperview]; 
// this will crash too, because object1 cannot be tested for nil because it does not exist

How can I check if the object exists before testing if it is nil? something as

if (object exists( {
  if(object != nil))
    [object removeFromSuperview)
}

is this possible?