Looping Through Objects in an Array

One way to loop through objects and stop when you’ve found the one you want is the following:

for (id oneObject in someArray) {
  if ([oneObject passesTest]) {
    return oneObject;
  }
}

The return could as well be a break statement. And the code in Swift would be something like this (typed without compiling; probably has errors, but you get the point):

for oneObject in someArray {
  if oneObject.passesTest() {
    return oneObject
  }
}

I’ve long been a fan of this. It’s easy to read and understand. It’s efficient because it stops as soon as the object is found.

It’s also pretty easy to make something re-usable: you could make a firstObjectPassingTest: category method that takes a block that performs the test. Easy.

In 10.6 Apple added - (void)enumerateObjects​UsingBlock:​(void (^)​(id obj, NSUInteger idx, BOOL *stop))block;

Mike Ash:

For simple enumeration, the block syntax doesn’t really offer any advantage over fast enumeration and the for/in syntax. The syntax is a bit clumsier, and iteration is a bit slower. The code has to call your block for every object. This overhead is less than that of a message send, as in the NSEnumerator case, but is more than the simple C for loop of NSFastEnumeration.

There are cases — dictionaries in particular — where the block-based enumeration can be the best choice. But most of the time the for-in enumeration is the straightforward and less clever approach. (“Less clever” is a good thing.) It’s faster too.

And yet… I’ve been afraid to say this out loud, as it seems to me that the entire world is on a we-love-blocks-and-hate-loops kick. (Back this up? I can’t. I love blocks too, but I have nothing against loops, and I’ll take the simple, clear, readable loop over a blocks-based method when it makes sense, which is almost every time, though not every time.)

And then today there was this response from Chris Lattner (message #11). I can’t quote it because it’s on the confidential Apple forums. But I bet anybody who’s read this far also has access to the forums and knows who Chris Lattner is.

And now I feel better about for-in loops.