How to add to an NSDictionary

A mutable dictionary can be changed, i.e. you can add and remove objects. An immutable is fixed once it is created.

create and add:

NSMutableDictionary *dict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc]initWithCapacity:10];
[dict setObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt:42] forKey:@"A cool number"];

and retrieve:

int myNumber = [[dict objectForKey:@"A cool number"] intValue];

By setting you'd use setValue:(id)value forKey:(id)key method of NSMutableDictionary object:

NSMutableDictionary *dict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
[dict setValue:[NSNumber numberWithInt:5] forKey:@"age"];

Or in modern Objective-C:

NSMutableDictionary *dict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
dict[@"age"] = @5;

The difference between mutable and "normal" is, well, mutability. I.e. you can alter the contents of NSMutableDictionary (and NSMutableArray) while you can't do that with "normal" NSDictionary and NSArray