Find NSDictionary in NSArray with Certain Value

Current project got lots of data in NSArrays and NSDictionaries. Nothing against them, extremely useful data structures. Just got to finetune my hammer a bit (since hammer is what I got and thus everything looks like a nail).

So how do you find a certain NSDictionary from NSArray containing a requested key? Two easy ways here:

This is what I usually did. Simple code, easy to understand, easy to debug, self-documenting, portable. Just a bit long:

- (NSInteger)findValue:(NSString *)value withKey:(NSString *)key
{
    if (!self.dictList)
        return -1;
   
    NSInteger count = 0;
    for (NSDictionary *dict in self.dictList)
    {
        if ([[dict objectForKey:key] isEqualToString:value])
            return count;
        else
            count++;
    }
    return -1;
}

This is what I'm using now. Non-portable iOS-only code, but it's shorter:

- (NSInteger)findValue:(NSString *)value withKey:(NSString *)key
{
    if (!self.dictList)
        return -1;

    NSArray *a = [self.dictList valueForKey:key];
    NSInteger index = [a indexOfObject:value];
    return index == NSNotFound ? -1: index;
}

The annoying first two lines are needed, since this code...

NSArray *a = nil;
NSInteger index = [a indexOfObject:@"test"];

...assings index == 0, which looks like a valid value. Work in progress. Also got to refactor rest of my code to treat NSIntegerMax as "not found" in stead of current "-1" value. More work in progress.