deep mutable copy of a NSMutableDictionary

Question

I am trying to create a deep-copy of a NSMutableDictionary and assign it to another NSMutableDictionary. The dictionary contains a bunch of arrays, each array containing nam

Answer 1

Assuming all elements of the array implement the NSCoding protocol, you can do deep copies via archiving because archiving will preserve the mutability of objects.

Something like this:

id DeepCopyViaArchiving(id anObject)
{
    NSData* archivedData = [NSKeyedArchiver archivedDataWithRootObject:anObject];
    return [[NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithData:archivedData] retain];
}

This isn't particularly efficient, though.