Swift Language Swift Advance functions Flatten multidimensional array

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Example

To flatten multidimensional array into single dimension, flatMap advance functions is used. Other use case is to neglect nil value from array & mapping values. Let's check with example:-

Suppose We have an multidimensional array of cities & we want to sorted city name list in ascending order. In that case we can use flatMap function like:-

let arrStateName = [["Alaska", "Iowa", "Missouri", "New Mexico"], ["New York", "Texas", "Washington", "Maryland"], ["New Jersey", "Virginia", "Florida", "Colorado"]]

Preparing a single dimensional list from multidimensional array,

let arrFlatStateList = arrStateName.flatMap({ $0 }) // ["Alaska", "Iowa", "Missouri", "New Mexico", "New York", "Texas", "Washington", "Maryland", "New Jersey", "Virginia", "Florida", "Colorado"]

For sorting array values, we can use chaining operation or sort flatten array. Here below example showing chaining operation,

// Swift 2.3 syntax 
let arrSortedStateList = arrStateName.flatMap({ $0 }).sort(<) // ["Alaska",     "Colorado", "Florida", "Iowa", "Maryland", "Missouri", "New Jersey", "New Mexico", "New York", "Texas", "Virginia", "Washington"]

// Swift 3 syntax
let arrSortedStateList = arrStateName.flatMap({ $0 }).sorted(by: <) // ["Alaska", "Colorado", "Florida", "Iowa", "Maryland", "Missouri", "New Jersey", "New Mexico", "New York", "Texas", "Virginia", "Washington"]


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