Is there a way to iterate over a dictionary?
Yes, NSDictionary
supports fast enumeration. With Objective-C 2.0, you can do this:
// To print out all key-value pairs in the NSDictionary myDict
for(id key in myDict)
NSLog(@"key=%@ value=%@", key, [myDict objectForKey:key]);
The alternate method (which you have to use if you're targeting Mac OS X pre-10.5, but you can still use on 10.5 and iPhone) is to use an NSEnumerator
:
NSEnumerator *enumerator = [myDict keyEnumerator];
id key;
// extra parens to suppress warning about using = instead of ==
while((key = [enumerator nextObject]))
NSLog(@"key=%@ value=%@", key, [myDict objectForKey:key]);
The block approach avoids running the lookup algorithm for every key:
[dict enumerateKeysAndObjectsUsingBlock:^(id key, id value, BOOL* stop) {
NSLog(@"%@ => %@", key, value);
}];
Even though NSDictionary
is implemented as a hashtable (which means that the cost of looking up an element is O(1)
), lookups still slow down your iteration by a constant factor.
My measurements show that for a dictionary d
of numbers ...
NSMutableDictionary* dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
for (int i = 0; i < 5000000; ++i) {
NSNumber* value = @(i);
dict[value.stringValue] = value;
}
... summing up the numbers with the block approach ...
__block int sum = 0;
[dict enumerateKeysAndObjectsUsingBlock:^(NSString* key, NSNumber* value, BOOL* stop) {
sum += value.intValue;
}];
... rather than the loop approach ...
int sum = 0;
for (NSString* key in dict)
sum += [dict[key] intValue];
... is about 40% faster.
EDIT: The new SDK (6.1+) appears to optimise loop iteration, so the loop approach is now about 20% faster than the block approach, at least for the simple case above.
This is iteration using block approach:
NSDictionary *dict = @{@"key1":@1, @"key2":@2, @"key3":@3};
[dict enumerateKeysAndObjectsUsingBlock:^(id key, id obj, BOOL *stop) {
NSLog(@"%@->%@",key,obj);
// Set stop to YES when you wanted to break the iteration.
}];
With autocompletion is very fast to set, and you do not have to worry about writing iteration envelope.