Merge multiple csv files with difference header tile in Objective C - objective-c

Question

I have multiple csv file with difference header tile, and I want to merge all of them & keep combination Header title.
I think I can doing cover csv to array then compare header tile in all file then merge csv file. However, seem it get huge processing time because o a lot of loop there. Could you help if have any fast solution.
Example:
file1.csv
No,Series,Product,A,B,C,D,E
1, AAA, XX, a1,b1,c1,d1,e1
file2.csv
No,Series,Product,A,C,D,B,E,F,G
1, AAB, XX, a1,c1,d1,b1,e1,f1,g1
file3.csv
No,Series,Product,A,A1,A2,C,D,B1,B,E
1, AAC, XX, a1,a11,a21,c1,d1,b11,b1,e1
My expected merge file is:
merge.csv
No,Series,Product,A,A1,A2,B,B1,C,D,E,F,G
1, AAA, XX, a1,0,0,b1,0,c1,d1
1, AAB, XX, a1,0,0,b1,0,c1,d1,e1,f1,g1
1, AAC, XX, a1,a11,a21,b1,b11,c1,d1,e1
"Data which not available in column will show as "0" or "NA",etc.

Answer 1

From your comment it seems you have no code but you think your sketch will be slow, it sounds like you are optimising prematurely – code your algorithm, test it, if its slow use Instruments to see where the time is being spent and then look at optimisation.
That said some suggestions:
You need to decide if you are supporting general CSV files, where field values may contain commas, newlines or double quotes; or simple CSV files where none of those characters is present in a field. See section 2 of Common Format and MIME Type for Comma-Separated Values (CSV) Files what what you need to parse to support general CSV files, and remember you need to output values using the same convention. If you stick with simple CSV files then NSString's componentsSeparatedByString: and NSArray's componentsJoinedByString: may be all you need to parse and output respectively.
Consider first iterating over your files reading just the header rows, parse those, and produce the merged list of headers. You will need to preserve the order of the headers, so you can pair them up with the data rows, so arrays are your container of choice here. You may choose to use sets in the merging process, but the final merged list of headers should also be an array in the order you wish them to appear in the merged file. You can use these arrays of headers directly in the dictionary methods below.
Using a dictionary as in your outline is one approach. In this case look at NSDictionary's dictionaryWithObjects:forKeys: for building the dictionary from the parsed header and record. For outputting the dictionary look at objectsForKeys:notFoundMarker: and using the merged list of headers. This supports missing keys and you supply the value to insert. For standard CSV's the missing value is empty (i.e. two adjacent commas in the text) but you can use NA or 0 as you suggest.
You can process each file in turn, a row at a time: read, parse, make dictionary, get an array of values back from dictionary with the missing value in the appropriate places, combine, write. You never need to hold a complete file in memory at any time.
If after implementing your code using dictionaries to easily handle the missing columns you find it is too slow you can then look at optimising. You might want to consider instead of breaking each input data row into fields and the recombining adding in the missing columns that you just do direct string replacement operations on the text of the data row and just add in extra delimiters as needed – e.g. if column four is missing you can change the third comma for two commas to insert the missing column.
If after designing your algorithm and coding it you hit problems you can ask a new question, include your algorithm and code, a link back to this question so people can follow the history, and explain what your issue is. Someone will undoubtedly help you take the next step.
HTH