Comparing two NSMutableDictionaries

Question

Hello fellow Computer People!

I could do this myself, but was just wondering if there was a more efficient way that I haven't though of:

I have two NSMutableDictionaries. Let us use these as an example:

Dictionary 'Madrid'

 Bob     : 54
 Thomas  : 32
 Frank   : 20


Dictionary 'Barcelona'

 Bob     : 1100
 Thomas  : 32
 Ed      : 55
 Frank   : 20

What I want to get from comparing these two is:

1. The fact that the value for Bob is different between the two Dictionaries
2. That Frank has a value in Barcelona, but was not at all in Madrid.

This is for monitoring a sort of time series to see if any activity is happening from one iteration to the next.

Obviously this should be dealt with in Objective-C.

Any opinions on the most efficient way of doing this?

Thanks so much!

Answer 1

Probably the best way would involve a simple loop through one of the dictionaries, then check to see if you missed any keys in the other dictionary. Since dictionaries are involved it would only be O(N)