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I've got a NSSearchField, whose action method does all the searching stuff, by analyzing the sender argument (string).

Now the searching stuff (feeding a large array) is kind of CPU intensive, which lets my search field freeze for some seconds.
In other cases i'd detach another NSThread to prevent my GUI from freezing. But in this case that is not possible, because I would detach another ("search") thread everytime the user enters another letter in the search field.

Is there another way of keeping my NSSearchField from freezing?

BTW: My guess is NO, because even the Developoer Documentation's seach field freezes all the time :)

bijan
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3 Answers3

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I use GCD. I use an async queue, and the job periodically checks if the current search pattern has changed from what it was called with, and bails if it has. This seems to work quite well.

Michael Johnston
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  • No need to drop to a level any lower than NSOperation/NSOperationQueue. However, remember to update your UI (with search results) on the main thread. If you have a lot of UI updates, *that* may block the main thread and freeze the UI, so try to coalesce search result updates (rather than update each time a single result comes through). – Joshua Nozzi Sep 05 '11 at 19:57
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Can't you use setSendsWholeSearchString: to stop it searching as letters are typed?

jscs
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Set an NSTimer every time the user types something. If there's a timer already set, invalidate or reschedule it.

That way, you only get called upon to refresh the search every N seconds, however fast the user types.

Joakim Braun
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