I'm having a problem with understand how I can work with substrings in Swift. Basically, I'm getting a JSON value that has a string with the following format:
Something
I'm trying to get rid of the HTML anchor tag with Swift so I'm left with Something. My thought was to find the index of every < and > in the string so then I could just do a substringWithRange and advance up to the right index.
My problem is that I can't figure out how to find the index. I've read that Swift doesn't support the index (unless you extend it.)
I don't want to add CPU cycles unnecessarily. So my question is, how do I find the indexes in a way that is not inefficient? Or, is there a better way of filtering out the tags?
Edit: Converted Andrew's first code sample to a function:
func formatTwitterSource(rawStr: String) -> String {
let unParsedString = rawStr
var midParseString = ""
var parsedString = ""
if let firstEndIndex = find(unParsedString, ">") {
midParseString = unParsedString[Range<String.Index>(start: firstEndIndex.successor(), end: unParsedString.endIndex)]
if let secondStartIndex = find(midParseString, "<") {
parsedString = midParseString[Range<String.Index>(start: midParseString.startIndex, end: secondStartIndex)]
}
}
return parsedString
}
Nothing too complicated. It takes in a String that has the tags in it. Then it uses Andrew's magic to parse everything out. I renamed the variables and made them clearer so you can see which variable does what in the process. Then in the end, it returns the parsed string.
You could do something like this, but it isn't pretty really. Obviously you would want to factor this into a function and possibly allow for various start/end tokens.
let testText = "Something"
if let firstEndIndex = find(testText, ">") {
let testText2 = testText[Range<String.Index>(start: firstEndIndex.successor(), end: testText.endIndex)]
if let secondStartIndex = find(testText2, "<") {
let testText3 = testText2[Range<String.Index>(start: testText2.startIndex, end: secondStartIndex)]
}
}
Edit
Working on this a little further and came up with something a little more idiomatic?
let startSplits = split(testText, { $0 == "<" })
let strippedValues = map(startSplits) { (s) -> String? in
if let endIndex = find(s, ">") {
return s[Range<String.Index>(start: endIndex.successor(), end: s.endIndex)]
}
return nil
}
let strings = map(filter(strippedValues, { $0 != "" })) { $0! }
It uses a little more functional style there at the end. Not sure I much enjoy the Swift style of map/filter compared to Haskell. But anyhow, the one potentially dangerous part is that forced unwrapping in the final map. If you can live with a result of [String?] then it isn't necessary.
Even though this question has been already answered, I am adding solution based on regex.
let pattern = "<.*>(.*)<.*>"
let src = "Something"
var error: NSError? = nil
var regex = NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options: .DotMatchesLineSeparators, error: &error)
if let regex = regex {
var result = regex.stringByReplacingMatchesInString(src, options: nil, range: NSRange(location:0,
length:countElements(src)), withTemplate: "$1")
println(result)
}
Related
I'm very, very new to Swift and admittedly struggling with some of its constructs. I have to work with a text file and do many manipulations - here's an example to illustrate the point:
let's say I have a text like this (multi line)
Mary had a little lamb
#name: a name
#summary: a paragraph of text
{{something}}
a whole bunch of multi-line text
x----------------x
I want to be able to do simple things like find the location of #name, then split it to get the name and so on. I've done this in javascript and it was pretty simple with the use of substr and the regex matches.
In swift, which is supposed to be swift and easy and what not, I'm finding this exceedingly confusing.
Can someone help with how one might do
Find the location of the start of a substring
Extract all text between from the end of a substring to the end of text
Sorry if this is trivial - but the Apple documentation feels very complicated, and lots of examples are years old. I can't also seem to find easy application of regex.
You can use string range(of: String) method to find the range of your string, get its upperBound and search for the end of the line from that position of the string:
Playground testing:
let sentence = """
Mary had a little lamb
#name: a name
#summary: a paragraph of text
{{something}}
a whole bunch of multi-line text
"""
if let start = sentence.range(of: "#name:")?.upperBound,
let end = sentence[start...].range(of: "\n")?.lowerBound {
let substring = sentence[start..<end]
print("name:", substring)
}
If you need to get the string from there to the end of the string you can use PartialRangeFrom:
if let start = sentence.range(of: "#summary:")?.upperBound {
let substring = sentence[start...]
print("summary:", substring)
}
If you find yourself using that a lot you can extend StringProtocol and create your own method:
extension StringProtocol {
func substring<S:StringProtocol,T:StringProtocol>(between start: S, and end: T, options: String.CompareOptions = []) -> SubSequence? {
guard
let lower = range(of: start, options: options)?.upperBound,
let upper = self[lower...].range(of: end, options: options)?.lowerBound
else { return nil }
return self[lower..<upper]
}
func substring<S:StringProtocol>(after string: S, options: String.CompareOptions = []) -> SubSequence? {
guard
let lower = range(of: string, options: options)?.upperBound else { return nil }
return self[lower...]
}
}
Usage:
let name = sentence.substring(between: "#name:", and: "\n") // " a name"
let sumary = sentence.substring(after: "#summary:") // " a paragraph of text\n\n{{something}}\n\na whole bunch of multi-line text"
You can use regular expressions as well:
let name = sentence.substring(between: "#\\w+:", and: "\\n", options: .regularExpression) // " a name"
You can do this with range() and distance():
let str = "Example string"
let range = str.range(of: "amp")!
print(str.distance(from: str.startIndex, to: range.lowerBound)) // 2
let lastStr = str[range.upperBound...]
print(lastStr) // "le string"
I have a relatively complex regex that I need to run in Swift. Originally was:
"typedef\W+struct\W+{([^}]*)}\W+(\w+);"
You can see the pattern working in JS here.
To make it compile in Swift I escaped the backslashes to:
"typedef\\W+struct\\W+{([^}]*)}\\W+(\\w+);"
On runtime the expression fails to compile with 2048 error. I tried escaping other characters too and tried also escapedPatternForString but without luck. Is there a script to convert JS regexs to Swift? Thanks!
You need to escape both { and } that are outside of a character class:
let rx = "typedef\\W+struct\\W+\\{([^}]*)\\}\\W+(\\w+);"
A quick demo:
let rx = "typedef\\W+struct\\W+\\{([^}]*)\\}\\W+(\\w+);"
let str = "typedef: struct { something } text;"
print(str.range(of: rx, options: .regularExpression) != nil)
// => true
When the { and } are inside a character class they may stay unescaped (as in [^}]).
Using this code (answer by Confused Vorlon), you may get the first match with all capturing groups:
extension NSTextCheckingResult {
func groups(testedString:String) -> [String] {
var groups = [String]()
for i in 0 ..< self.numberOfRanges
{
let group = String(testedString[Range(self.range(at: i), in: testedString)!])
groups.append(group)
}
return groups
}
}
let str = "typedef: struct { something } text;"
let rx = "typedef\\W+struct\\W+\\{([^}]*)\\}\\W+(\\w+);"
let MyRegex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: rx)
if let match = MyRegex.firstMatch(in: str, range: NSMakeRange(0, str.count)) {
let groups = match.groups(testedString: str)
print(groups)
}
// => ["typedef: struct { something } text;", " something ", "text"]
I am given a string like 4eysg22yl3kk and my output should be like this:
foureysgtweny-twoylthreekk or if I am given 0123 it should be output as one hundred twenty-three. So basically, as I scan the string, I need to convert numbers to string.
I do not know how to implement this in Swift as I iterate through the string? Any idea?
You actually have two basic problems.
The first is convert a "number" to "spelt out" value (ie 1 to one). This is actually easy to solve, as NumberFormatter has a spellOut style property
let formatter = NumberFormatter()
formatter.numberStyle = .spellOut
let text = formatter.string(from: NSNumber(value: 1))
which will result in "one", neat.
The other issue though, is how to you separate the numbers from the text?
While I can find any number of solutions for "extract" numbers or characters from a mixed String, I can't find one which return both, split on their boundaries, so, based on your input, we'd end up with ["4", "eysg", "22", "yl", "3", "kk"].
So, time to role our own...
func breakApart(_ text: String, withPattern pattern: String) throws -> [String]? {
do {
let regex = try NSRegularExpression(pattern: "[0-9]+", options: .caseInsensitive)
var previousRange: Range<String.Index>? = nil
var parts: [String] = []
for match in regex.matches(in: text, options: [], range: NSRange(location: 0, length: text.count)) {
guard let range = Range(match.range, in: text) else {
return nil
}
let part = text[range]
if let previousRange = previousRange {
let textRange = Range<String.Index>(uncheckedBounds: (lower: previousRange.upperBound, upper: range.lowerBound))
parts.append(String(text[textRange]))
}
parts.append(String(part))
previousRange = range
}
if let range = previousRange, range.upperBound != text.endIndex {
let textRange = Range<String.Index>(uncheckedBounds: (lower: range.upperBound, upper: text.endIndex))
parts.append(String(text[textRange]))
}
return parts
} catch {
}
return nil
}
Okay, so this is a little "dirty" (IMHO), but I can't seem to think of a better approach, hopefully someone will be kind enough to provide some hints towards one ;)
Basically what it does is uses a regular expression to find all the groups of numbers, it then builds an array, cutting the string apart around the matching boundaries - like I said, it's crude, but it gets the job done.
From there, we just need to map the results, spelling out the numbers as we go...
let formatter = NumberFormatter()
formatter.numberStyle = .spellOut
let value = "4eysg22yl3kk"
if let parts = try breakApart(value, withPattern: pattern) {
let result = parts.map { (part) -> String in
if let number = Int(part), let text = formatter.string(from: NSNumber(value: number)) {
return text
}
return part
}.joined(separator: " ")
print(result)
}
This will end up printing four eysg twenty-two yl three kk, if you don't want the spaces, just get rid of separator in the join function
I did this in Playgrounds, so it probably needs some cleaning up
I was able to solve my question without dealing with anything extra than converting my String to an array and check char by char. If I found a digit I was saving it in a temp String and as soon as I found out the next char is not digit, I converted my digit to its text.
let inputString = Array(string.lowercased())
What's the best way to go about removing the first six characters of a string? Through Stack Overflow, I've found a couple of ways that were supposed to be solutions but I noticed an error with them. For instance,
extension String {
func removing(charactersOf string: String) -> String {
let characterSet = CharacterSet(charactersIn: string)
let components = self.components(separatedBy: characterSet)
return components.joined(separator: "")
}
If I type in a website like https://www.example.com, and store it as a variable named website, then type in the following
website.removing(charactersOf: "https://")
it removes the https:// portion but it also removes all h's, all t's, :'s, etc. from the text.
How can I just delete the first characters?
In Swift 4 it is really simple, just use dropFirst(n: Int)
let myString = "Hello World"
myString.dropFirst(6)
//World
In your case: website.dropFirst(6)
Why not :
let stripped = String(website.characters.dropFirst(6))
Seems more concise and straightforward to me.
(it won't work with multi-char emojis either mind you)
[EDIT] Swift 4 made this even shorter:
let stripped = String(website.dropFirst(6))
length is the number of characters you want to remove (6 in your case)
extension String {
func toLengthOf(length:Int) -> String {
if length <= 0 {
return self
} else if let to = self.index(self.startIndex, offsetBy: length, limitedBy: self.endIndex) {
return self.substring(from: to)
} else {
return ""
}
}
}
It will remove first 6 characters from a string
var str = "Hello-World"
let range1 = str.characters.index(str.startIndex, offsetBy: 6)..<str.endIndex
str = str[range1]
print("the end time is : \(str)")
I am looking for a way to search an Array of strings (containing filenames with extension) for dots (if the string contains characters-a dot-charaters, print the string definition). To do that I have to use something like wildcards (.).
So I tried this :
let testString = "*.*"
if Array[x].countains(testString)
{
print (Array[x])
}
or
if Array[x].range(of:testString) != nil
{
print (Array[x])
}
But it does not work. I guess I have to declare it differently but I don't know how and I have not found the right example.
Could someone shows some examples? Thank U.
Using this helper method on String:
extension String {
func contains(regex: NSRegularExpression) -> Bool {
let length = self.utf16.count // NSRanges are UTF-16 based!
let wholeString = NSRange(location: 0, length: length)
let matchCount = regex.numberOfMatches(in: self, range: wholeString)
return matchCount > 0
}
}
Then try this:
let fileNameWithExtension = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: "\\w+[.]\\w+")
if Array[x].contains(regex: fileNameWithExtension) {
print(Array[x])
}
You may need to tweak my pattern above in order to match all cases you have in mind. This NSRegularExpression cheat sheet might help you there ;-)