What's the Best Way to Shuffle an NSMutableArray?

Question

If you have an NSMutableArray, how do you shuffle the elements randomly?

(I have my own answer for this, which is posted below, but I\'m new to Cocoa an

Answer 1

This is the simplest and fastest way to shuffle NSArrays or NSMutableArrays (object puzzles is a NSMutableArray, it contains puzzle objects. I've added to puzzle object variable index which indicates initial position in array)

int randomSort(id obj1, id obj2, void *context ) {
        // returns random number -1 0 1
    return (random()%3 - 1);    
}

- (void)shuffle {
        // call custom sort function
    [puzzles sortUsingFunction:randomSort context:nil];

    // show in log how is our array sorted
        int i = 0;
    for (Puzzle * puzzle in puzzles) {
        NSLog(@" #%d has index %d", i, puzzle.index);
        i++;
    }
}

log output:

 #0 has index #6
 #1 has index #3
 #2 has index #9
 #3 has index #15
 #4 has index #8
 #5 has index #0
 #6 has index #1
 #7 has index #4
 #8 has index #7
 #9 has index #12
 #10 has index #14
 #11 has index #16
 #12 has index #17
 #13 has index #10
 #14 has index #11
 #15 has index #13
 #16 has index #5
 #17 has index #2

you may as well compare obj1 with obj2 and decide what you want to return possible values are:

• NSOrderedAscending = -1
• NSOrderedSame = 0
• NSOrderedDescending = 1