Getting an object from an NSSet

Most of the time you don't care about getting one particular object from a set. You care about testing to see if a set contains an object. That's what sets are good for. When you want to see if an object is in a collection sets are much faster than arrays.

If you don't care about which object you get, use -anyObject which just gives you one object from the set, like putting your hand in a bag and grabbing something.

Dog *aDog = [dogs anyObject]; // dogs is an NSSet of Dog objects

If you care about what object you get, use -member which gives you back the object, or nil if it's not in the set. You need to already have the object before you call it.

Dog *spot = [Dog dogWithName:@"Spot"];
// ...
Dog *aDog = [dogs member:spot]; // Returns the same object as above

Here's some code you can run in Xcode to understand more

NSString *one = @"One";
NSString *two = @"Two";
NSString *three = @"Three";

NSSet *set = [NSSet setWithObjects:one, two, three, nil];

// Can't use Objective-C literals to create a set.
// Incompatible pointer types initializing 'NSSet *' with an expression of type 'NSArray *'
//  NSSet *set = @[one, two, three];

NSLog(@"Set: %@", set);
// Prints looking just like an array but is actually not in any order
//Set: {(
//     One,
//     Two,
//     Three
//     )}

// Get a random object
NSString *random = [set anyObject];
NSLog(@"Random: %@", random); // Random: One

// Iterate through objects. Again, although it prints in order, the order is a lie
for (NSString *aString in set) {
    NSLog(@"A String: %@", aString);
}

// Get an array from the set
NSArray *array = [set allObjects];
NSLog(@"Array: %@", array);

// Check for an object
if ([set containsObject:two]) {
    NSLog(@"Set contains two");
}

// Check whether a set contains an object and return that object if it does (nil if not)
NSString *aTwo = [set member:two];
if (aTwo) {
    NSLog(@"Set contains: %@", aTwo);
}