Swift Array size limit and Xcode compile limits

Question

I have extracted OSX English language dictionary and want to use it in my Swift iPhone app. It has about 236,000 words which I have added to a swift string array.

When I try to run the build, it takes a long time to compile and then throws Segmentation Fault 11

Is this because the array is too big?

Am I going the correct path trying to add english dictionary in my project?

Is the English dictionary part of your source code or do you add it as a resource and read it from the file system? — freytag
– freytag, Commented Jul 9, 2015 at 14:14
An average word in English has 7 characters. 236K words take 1.5MB. That's not too big, even on iOS devices. — Code Different
– Code Different, Commented Jul 9, 2015 at 14:14
I havn't even implemented a for loop yet. I am just declaring the array with 236,000 word strings in it. It is in the swift file not a separate resource file. — Kashif
– Kashif, Commented Jul 9, 2015 at 14:17

AlBlue · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-09 14:28:22Z

1

You should probably not store this as a single string. There are more efficient data structures that you can use, such as a trie. You should also consider not loading the entire content into memory at one point but be able to navigate it from the filesystem.

answered Jul 9, 2015 at 14:28

AlBlue

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1 Comment

Kashif Over a year ago

As I answered myself, I was able to solve the issue but looping through array still takes some 0.2 sec or so which is slow for the purpose of my app. I like the trie idea but this concept is new to me and I do not know how to implement it in SWIFT. Will I need an additional framework or extension to accomplish it?

Kashif · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-10 12:02:43Z

1

I was able to solve this problem by adding the actual dictionary text file into my xcode project. then utilize below code to fill words from the file to an array. it was pretty fast.

let path = NSBundle.mainBundle().pathForResource("dict2", ofType: "txt")
let dico = String(contentsOfFile: path!, encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding, error: nil)
let dict = dico!.componentsSeparatedByString("\n")

Hope it helps someone.

edited Jul 10, 2015 at 12:02

answered Jul 9, 2015 at 22:28

Kashif

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2 Comments

melwyn pawar Over a year ago

I am facing a similar problem @Kashif is "dict2" a supporting file "dict2.txt"?

Kashif Over a year ago

I just dragged dict2.txt into my project and made sure it target was selected

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