Question

Is it acceptable to have a NSMutableArray within an NSDictionary? Or does the NSDictionary also have to be mutable?

The NSMutableArray will have values added to it at runtime, the NSDictionary will always have the same 2 NSMutableArrays.

Thanks,

Dan

Answer 1

Yes, it’s perfectly acceptable. Keep in mind, the contents of the array are the pointers to your NSMutableArrays–those are what can’t change in the immutable dictionary structure. What the pointers point to can change all you want. To wit:

NSMutableArray *arr = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; NSDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObject:arr forKey:@'test'];  [arr addObject:@'Hello']; NSString *str = [[dict objectForKey:@'test'] objectAtIndex:0]; NSLog('%@', str);