How can I check if a string contains letters in Swift? [duplicate] - swift

Question

This question already has answers here:
What is the best way to determine if a string contains a character from a set in Swift
(11 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I'm trying to check whether a specific string contains letters or not.
So far I've come across NSCharacterSet.letterCharacterSet() as a set of letters, but I'm having trouble checking whether a character in that set is in the given string. When I use this code, I get an error stating:
'Character' is not convertible to 'unichar'
For the following code:
for chr in input{
if letterSet.characterIsMember(chr){
return "Woah, chill out!"
}
}

Answer 1

You can use NSCharacterSet in the following way :
let letters = NSCharacterSet.letters
let phrase = "Test case"
let range = phrase.rangeOfCharacter(from: characterSet)
// range will be nil if no letters is found
if let test = range {
println("letters found")
}
else {
println("letters not found")
}
Or you can do this too :
func containsOnlyLetters(input: String) -> Bool {
for chr in input {
if (!(chr >= "a" && chr <= "z") && !(chr >= "A" && chr <= "Z") ) {
return false
}
}
return true
}
In Swift 2:
func containsOnlyLetters(input: String) -> Bool {
for chr in input.characters {
if (!(chr >= "a" && chr <= "z") && !(chr >= "A" && chr <= "Z") ) {
return false
}
}
return true
}
It's up to you, choose a way. I hope this help you.

Answer 2

You should use the Strings built in range functions with NSCharacterSet rather than roll your own solution. This will give you a lot more flexibility too (like case insensitive search if you so desire).
let str = "Hey this is a string"
let characterSet = NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: "aeiou")
if let _ = str.rangeOfCharacterFromSet(characterSet, options: .CaseInsensitiveSearch) {
println("true")
}
else {
println("false")
}
Substitute "aeiou" with whatever letters you're looking for.
A less flexible, but fun swift note all the same, is that you can use any of the functions available for Sequences. So you can do this:
contains("abc", "c")
This of course will only work for individual characters, and is not flexible and not recommended.

Answer 3

The trouble with .characterIsMember is that it takes a unichar (a typealias for UInt16).
If you iterate your input using the utf16 view of the string, it will work:
let set = NSCharacterSet.letterCharacterSet()
for chr in input.utf16 {
if set.characterIsMember(chr) {
println("\(chr) is a letter")
}
}
You can also skip the loop and use the contains algorithm if you only want to check for presence/non-presence:
if contains(input.utf16, { set.characterIsMember($0) }) {
println("contains letters")
}