What is the best way to add to an apex collection of String

Question

Is there a more efficient way to Select data into a String collection e.g. Set<String> than using a for loop

Set<String> allTopicSet = new Set<String>();    
for (Topic t: [select name from Topic]) {
    allTopicSet.add(t.Name);
}

Answer 1

There isn't, you can only get the Id of a list of objects easily by converting the list to a map and getting the keyset. (See I just want the IDs?)

I'm afraid you're stuck to looping over the list, and adding them manually like you are doing now.