How to create a set of sets (18 sets with 5 separate integers per set, all condensed in a single set)

Question

How would I write the following in Objective-C? Each integer represents a state of a motor (5 motors, with clockwise (1), off (0), counterclockwise (-1) as the states). There are 18 sequences where each motors is "told" to run in CW or CCW direction, or stay off.

{{1,0,0,0,0},
 {0,0,-1,0,0},
 {0,1,0,1,0},
 // etc. for another 15 sets
}

Couple of questions:

1. I only want to read these values...should I use NSSet?
2. Would I write the integers as objects? (etc. @"1") Or can I keep them as integers
3. If I wanted to add a known time stamp in the set, would that change the identity of the set (meaning, it would no longer be an integer-based set) ? Ex: the first time stamp would be 0.3 seconds.

Let me know if you need anymore information. Thanks

Answer 1

we can direct add integer values in array. and can access value with intvalue.

arrMotorStates=[[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
NSMutableArray *arr1=[[NSMutableArray alloc]initWithObjects:@1,@0,@0,@0,@0, nil];
NSMutableArray *arr2=[[NSMutableArray alloc]initWithObjects:@0,@0,@-1,@0,@0, nil];
[arr1 addObject:@5];
[arrMotorStates addObject:arr1];
[arrMotorStates addObject:arr2];
NSLog(@"%d",[arrMotorStates[1][2] intValue]);

Answer 2

As pointed out, you can't use sets to organize this for two reasons. First, sets only contain unique values and your sets have duplicate values. Second, sets are unordered; the values in your collection have an order.

Arrays would be the simplest solution. In modern Obj-C immutable (read-only) arrays can be declared and built at run-time. And since an array is an object, you can build arrays of arrays.

Declaration:

NSArray<NSArray<NSNumber*>*>* motorState = @[ @[ @1, @0, @0,  @0, @0 ],
                                              @[ @0, @0, @-1, @0, @0 ],
                                              @[ @0, @1, @0,  @1, @0 ] ];

Access:

// get value of row 1, column 3
NSInteger state = motorState[1][3].integerValue;

The only hitch is that the vanilla foundation arrays can only store object references, so each value is encoded as an NSNumber.