Deep copying an NSArray

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.