When I remove the comments around this and run the unit test I wrote to check this behaviour, I get a failure.

The unit test is:

```objective-c
    var testErrorDescription = @"",
        testWithString = [numberFormatter getObjectValue:noneFunction forString:@"Cappuccino" errorDescription:testErrorDescription];
    [self assertFalse:testWithString
              message:@"MinMax T9: Expected False."];
    [self assert:testErrorDescription
          equals:@"Value is not a number"
          message:@"MinMax T10: Error string does not match."];
```

And the failure message is:

```
addFailure test=[CPNumberFormatterTest testMinimumMaximumValues]: MinMax T10: Error string does not match. expected:<> but was:<Value is not a number>
```
(Ignoring that in OJUnit "expected/but was" is reversed).

Because AT_REF is only available inside the framework, I cannot do AT_REF in the unit test to pass a reference to the string object, and performing AT_REF inside breaks the contract with what's being passed in (CPStringRef).

Alexander mentioned that it is possible to ref/deref by hand, but I'm afraid my remedial JavaScript courses haven't gotten that far yet. :)