Swift String Tokenizer / Parser [closed] - swift

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Hello there fellow Swift devs!
I am a junior dev, and I'm trying to figure out a best way to tokenize / parse Swift String as an exercise.
What I have is a string which looks like this:
let string = "This is a {B}string{/B} and this is a substring."
What I would like to do is, tokenize the string, and change the "strings / tokens" inside the tags you see.
I can see using NSRegularExpression and it's matches, but it feels too generic. I would like to have only say 2 of these tags, that change the text. What would be the best approach in Swift 5.2^?
if let regex = try? NSRegularExpression(pattern: "\\{[a-z0-9]+\}", options: .caseInsensitive) {
let string = self as NSString
return regex.matches(in: self, options: [], range: NSRange(location: 0, length: string.length)).map {
// now $0 is the result? but it won't work for enclosing the tags :/
}
}

Answer 1

If the option of using html tags instead of {B}{/B} is acceptable, then you can use the StringEx library that I wrote for this purpose.
You can select a substring inside the html tag and replace it with another string like this:
let string = "This is a <b>string</b> and this is a substring."
let ex = string.ex
ex[.tag("b")].replace(with: "some value")
print(ex.rawString) // This is a <b>some value</b> and this is a substring.
print(ex.string) // This is a some value and this is a substring.
if necessary, you can also style the selected substrings and get NSAttributedString:
ex[.tag("b")].style([
.font(.boldSystemFont(ofSize: 16)),
.color(.black)
])
myLabel.attributedText = ex.attributedString

Answer 2

Not sure if you have solved it with NLTokenizer or not, but you can certainly solve it with Regx here is how (I have implemented it as generic, in future if you have to handle different kinds of tags and substite different string for them small tweak to the logic should do the job )
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
let regexStr = "(\\{B\\}(\\s*\\w+\\s*)*\\{\\/B\\})"
let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: regexStr)
var string = "Sandeep {B}Bhandaari{/B} is here{B}Sandeep{/B}"
var foundRanges = [NSRange]()
regex.enumerateMatches(in: string, options: [], range: NSMakeRange(0, string.count)) { (match, flag, stop) in
if let matchRange = match?.range(at: 1) {
foundRanges.append(matchRange)
}
}
let substituteString = "abcd"
var replacedString = string as NSString
let foundRangesCount = foundRanges.count
var currentRange = 0
while foundRangesCount > currentRange {
let range = foundRanges[currentRange]
replacedString = replacedString.replacingCharacters(in: range, with: substituteString) as NSString
reEvaluateAllRanges(ranges: &foundRanges, byOffset: range.length - substituteString.count)
currentRange += 1
}
debugPrint(replacedString)
}
func reEvaluateAllRanges(ranges: inout [NSRange], byOffset: Int) {
var newFoundRange = [NSRange]()
for range in ranges {
newFoundRange.append(NSMakeRange(range.location - byOffset, range.length))
}
ranges = newFoundRange
}
Input: "Sandeep {B}Bhandaari{/B} is here"
Output: Sandeep abcd is here
Input: "Sandeep {B}Bhandaari{/B} is here{B}Sandeep{/B}"
Output: Sandeep abcd is hereabcd
Look at the edge case handling Longer strings replaced by smaller substitute strings and vice versa also detection of string enclosed in tag with / without space
EDIT 1:
Regx (\\{B\\}(\\s*\\w+\\s*)*\\{\\/B\\}) should be self explanatory, incase you need help with understanding it use cheat sheet
regex.enumerateMatches(in: string, options: [], range: NSMakeRange(0, string.count)) { (match, flag, stop) in
if let matchRange = match?.range(at: 1) {
foundRanges.append(matchRange)
}
}
I could have modified substring here itself, but if you have more than one match and if you mutate string evaluated ranges will be corrupted hence am saving all found ranges into an array and apply replace on each one of them later
let substituteString = "abcd"
var replacedString = string as NSString
let foundRangesCount = foundRanges.count
var currentRange = 0
while foundRangesCount > currentRange {
let range = foundRanges[currentRange]
replacedString = replacedString.replacingCharacters(in: range, with: substituteString) as NSString
reEvaluateAllRanges(ranges: &foundRanges, byOffset: range.length - substituteString.count)
currentRange += 1
}
Here am iterating through all found match ranges and replace character in range with substitute string, you can always have a switch / if else ladder inside while loop to look for different types of tags and pass different substitute strings for each tags
func reEvaluateAllRanges(ranges: inout [NSRange], byOffset: Int) {
var newFoundRange = [NSRange]()
for range in ranges {
newFoundRange.append(NSMakeRange(range.location - byOffset, range.length))
}
ranges = newFoundRange
}
This function modifies all the ranges in array using the offset, remember you need to only modify range's location, length remains same
One bit of optimisation you can do is probably get rid of ranges from array for which you have already applied substitute strings