Question

I’m looping through an array and comparing the objects tag property in this array with the objects in another array.

Here’s my code:

NSArray *objectsArray = ...;
NSArray *anotherObjectArray = ...;
NSMutableArray *mutableArray = ...;

for (ObjectA *objectA in objectsArray) {
    for (ObjectZ *objectZ in anotherObjectArray) {
        if ([objectA.tag isEqualToString:objectZ.tag]) {
            [mutableArray addObject:objectA];
        }
    }
}

Is there a better way to do this?

Please note the tag property is not an integer, so have to compare strings.

Answer 1

You can do this by iterating over each array once, rather than nesting:

NSMutableSet *tagSet = [NSMutableSet setWithCapacity:[anotherObjectArray count]];

for(ObjectZ *objectZ in antherObjectArray) {
    [tagSet addObject:objectZ.tag];
}

NSMutableArray *output = [NSMutableArray mutableArray];

for(ObjectA *objectA in objectsArray) {
    if([tagSet containsObject:objectA.tag]) {
        [output addObject:objectA];
    }
}