Question

I am familiar with getting a string count from a known array

    int numberOfWords = [self.wordArray count]; 

but I have an unknown number of strings in an unknown number of arrays, all referenced by a dictionary. This works – good.

   NSMutableDictionary *eqClasses = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];

The arrays and strings are added at runtime (with help of this board):

            NSMutableArray* array = [eqClasses objectForKey:wordPattern];
            if(!array) {
                // create new array and add to dictionary if wordPattern not found
                array = [NSMutableArray array];
                [eqClasses setObject:array forKey:wordPattern];
            }
            [array addObject:tempWordStr];

Now I need to iterate through the dictionary and get the array with the largest word count. Is there a way to scroll through all the arrays in the dictionary without using a key (I won’t know all the word patterns as they are generated dynamically), AND once I find the array with the most words, get that array/value and key/wordpattern?

Answer 1

Well, there is a way to get all the keys within a dictionary:

NSArray *keyArray = [myDict allKeys];

And then you just go through the array and get the object for each key.
A fast enumeration should work nicely.

for (NSString *string in NSArray){
    ...
} //Assuming your keys are strings!

You can save each string to a temporary string, and when encountering a new string, compare to find the longer one. If it’s longer, replace the old string with the longer one.

Hope this helped! ^_^