CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosswiftalgorithm
Tometoyou
Tometoyou

Reputation: 8376

Improving on the efficiency of my filtering of arrays with potentially hundreds of thousands of elements

I have an array of numbers. I want to find those in array1 that aren't also in array2, like this:

var array1 = [1, 2, 3, 4]
var array2 = [2, 4, 5, 6]

var result = [1, 3]

I've solved the problem by looping through all the numbers in the array2 and adding them to a dictionary. Then I loop through array1 and add those that aren't in the dictionary to the result array:

var result: [Int] = []
var numbersDict: [Int : Bool] = [:]

for element in array2 {
  numbersDict[element] = true
}

for element in array1 {
  if numbersDict[element] == nil {
    result.append(element)
  }
}

I also want to find those in array2 that aren't in array1

var array1 = [1, 2, 3, 4]
var array2 = [2, 4, 5, 6]

var result = [5, 6]

I've solved this like this:

var result: [Int] = []
var numbersDict: [Int : Bool] = [:]

for element in array1 {
  numbersDict[element] = true
}

for element in array2 {
  if numbersDict[element] == nil {
    result.append(element)
  }
}

How can I do this in the most efficient way? Assuming that these arrays could potentially be tens if not hundreds of thousands of numbers long. Should I be using sorting?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 50

Answers (1)

George
George

Reputation: 30341

Just use Set.

Example which gets elements in array1 but not in array2:

let array1: Set = [1, 2, 3, 4]
let array2: Set = [2, 4, 5, 6]

let result = array1.subtracting(array2)
print(result)
// Prints: [1, 3]  <- Order may vary since it is a set

Just switch the two sets around to get the opposite result, of in array2 but not in array1.

There are lots of Set operations, another one is intersection(_:):

let result = array1.intersection(array2)
print(result)
// Prints: [2, 4]  <- Again, no order

Upvotes: 2

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