Question

I have an NSMutableDictionary with two keys. One for titles (e.g. ‘Test’) and one for distances (e.g. ‘200’ miles).

How can I order these values by the nearest or furthest distance. I would need both the title AND distance value indexes to change when they are ordered.

So this would be the regular version of the NSMutableDictionary:

Titles: (
    "Test1"
    "Test2"
    "Test3"
)

Distances: (
    "240"
    "43"
    "482"
)

And the ordered version (for nearest distances):

Titles: (
    "Test2"
    "Test1"
    "Test3"
)

Distances: (
    "43"
    "240"
    "482"
)

Answer 1

I can’t help but feel that what you want is an NSArray of NSDictionaries, or an NSArray of custom objects. This design feels really awkward and creates extra work — because the only real answer if you structure your data this way is “Create a custom API around the whole thing that very carefully manages this invariant, and then only ever mutate this data structure through that interface.”