How to get the first characters in a string? (Swift 3) - swift

Question

I want to get a substring out of a string which starts with either "<ONLINE>" or "<OFFLINE>" (which should become my substring). When I try to create a Range object, I can easily access the the first character by using startIndex but how do I get the index of the closing bracket of my substring which will be either the 8th or 9th character of the full string?
UPDATE:
A simple example:
let onlineString:String = "<ONLINE> Message with online tag!"
let substring:String = // Get the "<ONLINE> " part from my string?
let onlineStringWithoutTag:String = onlineString.replaceOccurances(of: substring, with: "")
// What I should get as the result: "Message with online tag!"
So basically, the question is: what do I do for substring?

Answer 1

let name = "Ajay"
// Use following line to extract first chracter(In String format)
print(name.characters.first?.description ?? "");
// Output : "A"

Answer 2

If you did not want to use range
let onlineString:String = "<ONLINE> Message with online tag!"
let substring:String = onlineString.components(separatedBy: " ")[0]
print(substring) // <ONLINE>

Answer 3

The correct way would be to use indexes as following:
let string = "123 456"
let firstCharIndex = string.index(string.startIndex, offsetBy: 1)
let firstChar = string.substring(to: firstCharIndex)
print(firstChar)

Answer 4

This Code provides you the first character of the string.
Swift provides this method which returns character? you have to wrap it before use
let str = "FirstCharacter"
print(str.first!)

Answer 5

Similar to OOPer's:
let string = "<ONLINE>"
let closingTag = CharacterSet(charactersIn: ">")
if let closingTagIndex = string.rangeOfCharacter(from: closingTag) {
let mySubstring = string.substring(with: string.startIndex..<closingTagIndex.upperBound)
}
Or with regex:
let string = "<ONLINE>jhkjhkh>"
if let range = string.range(of: "<[A-Z]+>", options: .regularExpression) {
let mySubstring = string.substring(with: range)
}

Answer 6

This code be some help for your purpose:
let myString = "<ONLINE>abc"
if let rangeOfClosingAngleBracket = myString.range(of: ">") {
let substring = myString.substring(to: rangeOfClosingAngleBracket.upperBound)
print(substring) //-><ONLINE>
}

Answer 7

Swift 4
let firstCharIndex = oneGivenName.index(oneGivenName.startIndex, offsetBy: 1)
let firstChar = String(oneGivenName[..<firstCharIndex])

Answer 8

let character = MyString.first
it's an simple way to get first character from string in swift.

Answer 9

In swift 5
let someString = "Stackoverflow"
let firstChar = someString.first?.description ?? ""
print(firstChar)

Answer 10

Swift 5 extension
extension String {
var firstCharactor: String? {
guard self.count > 0 else {
return nil
}
return String(self.prefix(1))
}
}