Deep copying an NSArray

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Is there any built-in function that allows me to deep copy an NSMutableArray?

I looked around, some people say [aMutableArray copyWithZone:nil] works as deep copy. But I tried and it seems to be a shallow copy.

Right now I am manually doing the copy with a for loop:

//deep copy a 9*9 mutable array to a passed-in reference array

-deepMuCopy : (NSMutableArray*) array 
    toNewArray : (NSMutableArray*) arrayNew {

    [arrayNew removeAllObjects];//ensure it's clean

    for (int y = 0; y<9; y++) {
        [arrayNew addObject:[NSMutableArray new]];
        for (int x = 0; x<9; x++) {
            [[arrayNew objectAtIndex:y] addObject:[NSMutableArray new]];

            NSMutableArray *aDomain = [[array objectAtIndex:y] objectAtIndex:x];
            for (int i = 0; i<[aDomain count]; i++) {

                //copy object by object
                NSNumber* n = [NSNumber numberWithInt:[[aDomain objectAtIndex:i] intValue]];
                [[[arrayNew objectAtIndex:y] objectAtIndex:x] addObject:n];
            }
        }
    }
}

but I'd like a cleaner, more succinct solution.

deep-copy nsarray objective-c cocoa cocoa-touch
6 Answers

As the Apple documentation about deep copies explicitly states:

If you only need a one-level-deep copy:

NSMutableArray *newArray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] 
                             initWithArray:oldArray copyItems:YES];

The above code creates a new array whose members are shallow copies of the members of the old array.

Note that if you need to deeply copy an entire nested data structure — what the linked Apple docs call a true deep copy — then this approach will not suffice. Please see the other answers here for that.

Fran231ois_P_543800

The only way I know to easily do this is to archive and then immediately unarchive your array. It feels like a bit of a hack, but is actually explicitly suggested in the Apple Documentation on copying collections, which states:

If you need a true deep copy, such as when you have an array of arrays, you can archive and then unarchive the collection, provided the contents all conform to the NSCoding protocol. An example of this technique is shown in Listing 3.

Listing 3 A true deep copy

NSArray* trueDeepCopyArray = [NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithData:
          [NSKeyedArchiver archivedDataWithRootObject:oldArray]];

The catch is that your object must support the NSCoding interface, since this will be used to store/load the data.

Swift 2 Version:

let trueDeepCopyArray = NSKeyedUnarchiver.unarchiveObjectWithData(
    NSKeyedArchiver.archivedDataWithRootObject(oldArray))
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