How to find and replace symbols in a string? - iphone

I know it must be a very simple thing to do but I've never had to treat strings before (in Objective-C) and apparently there's not RegEx on Cocoa-Touch.
Well, the situation is:
I have a text field to get a value (money, such as 32.10 for instance).
The problem:
If the user types in a symbol such as #, /, # etc. my app will crash.
The Question: How can I treat this string to remove the symbols if there are any?

you can try this:
NSString *s = #"12.827##584";
NSCharacterSet *removeCharSet = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:#"/:##"];
s = [[s componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet: removeCharSet] componentsJoinedByString: #""];
NSLog(#"%#", s);

You do get regex in Cocoa Touch.
Here's a good discussion of the varying degrees of regex power in iOS, the blocks example at the end should get you most of the way there.
http://volonbolon.net/post/861427732/text-handling-in-ios-4

I understand you're trying to figure out the number included in the UITextFields's text property and assign it to a float variable.
Try using an NSScanner for this:
NSScanner* textScanner = [NSScanner localizedScannerWithString:textfield.text];
float* floatValue;
[textScanner scanFloat:&floatValue];
floatValue now contains the parsed float value of your textfield.

Related

get ascii code from string in xcode for iphone app

hey just a couple quick noob questions about writing my first ios app. Ive been searching through the questions here but they all seem to address questions more advanced than mine so im getting confused.
(1) All I want to do is turn a string into an array of integers representing the ASCII code. In other words, I want to convert:
"This is some string. It has spaces, punctuation, AND capitals."
into an array with 62 integers.
(2) How do I get back from the NSArray to a string?
(3) Also, are these expensive operations in terms of memory or computation time? It seems like it might be if we have to create a new variable at every iteration or something.
I know how to declare all the variables and im assuming I run a loop through the length of the string and at each iteration I somehow get the character and convert it into a number with some call to a built in command.
Thanks for any help you can offer or links to posts that might help!
if you want to store the ascii values in an nsarray it is going to be expensive. NSArray can only hold objects so you're going to have to create an NSNumber for each ASCII value:
unsigned len = [string length];
NSMutableArray arr = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:len];
for (unsigned i = 0; i < len; ++i) {
[arr addObject:[NSNumber numberWithUnsignedShort:[string characterAtIndex:i]]];
}
2) to go back to an NSString you'll need to use an MSMutableString and append each byte to the NSMutableString.
After saying that I'd suggest you don't use this method if you can avoid it.
A better approach would be to use #EmilioPelaez's answer. To go back from a memory buffer to an NSString is simple and inexpensive compared to iterating and concatting strings.
NSString * stringFromMemory = [[NSString alloc] initWithBytes:buffer length:len encoding: NSASCIIStringEncoding];
I ended up using the syntax I found here. Thanks for the help
How to convert ASCII value to a character in Objective-C?
NSString has a method to get the characters in an array:
NSString *string = "This is some string. It has spaces, punctuation, AND capitals.";
unichar *buffer = malloc(sizeof(unichar) * [string lenght]);
[string getCharacters:buffer range:NSMakeRange(0, [string length])];
If you check the definition of unichar, it's an unsigned short.

is there a way to get the character count in a string? in obj c

hii every one
is there a way to get the character count in a string in obj c?
like how does the SMS app determine how big of a bubble the text view sends and receives? thanks a lot
You can use something like this:
NSString *str = #"Hello World!";
NSUInteger len = str.length;
If it is NSString then use str.length
If it is c string then use strlen(cString)
If it is a NSString then
[string length];
Not sure if you are talking about multi-bytes characters
length
Returns the number of Unicode
characters in the receiver.
- (NSUInteger)length
Return Value
The number of Unicode characters in
the receiver. Discussion
The number returned includes the
individual characters of composed
character sequences, so you cannot use
this method to determine if a string
will be visible when printed or how
long it will appear.
NSLog(#"Length of your string is %d",[yourString length]);

Splitting a number off prefix of a string on iPhone

Say I have a string like "123alpha". I can use NSNumber to get the 123 out, but how can I determine the part of the string that NSNumber didn't use?
You can use NSScanner to both get the value and the rest of the string.
NSString *input = #"123alpha";
NSScanner *scanner = [NSScanner scannerWithString:input];
float number;
[scanner scanFloat:&number];
NSString *rest = [input substringFromIndex:[scanner scanLocation]];
If it is important to know exactly what is left after parsing the value this is a better approach than trying to trim characters. While I can't think of any particular bad input at the moment that would fail the solution suggested by the OP in the comment to this answer, it looks like a bug waiting to happen.
if your numbers are always at the beginning or end of a string and you want only the remaining characters, you could trim with a character set.
NSString *alpha = #"123alpha";
NSString *stripped = [alpha stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:#"0123456789"]];
If its starts out as a char * (as opposed to an NSString *), you can use strtol() to get the number and discover where the number ends in a single call.

How do you split NSString into component parts?

In Xcode, if I have an NSString containing a number, ie #"12345", how do I split it into an array representing component parts, ie "1", "2", "3", "4", "5"... There is a componentsSeparatedByString on the NSString object, but in this case there is no delimiter...
There is a ready member function of NSString for doing that:
NSString* foo = #"safgafsfhsdhdfs/gfdgdsgsdg/gdfsgsdgsd";
NSArray* stringComponents = [foo componentsSeparatedByString:#"/"];
It may seem like characterAtIndex: would do the trick, but that returns a unichar, which isn't an NSObject-derived data type and so can't be put into an array directly. You'd need to construct a new string with each unichar.
A simpler solution is to use substringWithRange: with 1-character ranges. Run your string through a simple for (int i=0;i<[myString length];i++) loop to add each 1-character range to an NSMutableArray.
A NSString already is an array of it’s components, if by components you mean single characters. Use [string length] to get the length of the string and [string characterAtIndex:] to get the characters.
If you really need an array of string objects with only one character you will have to create that array yourself. Loop over the characters in the string with a for loop, create a new string with a single character using [NSString stringWithFormat:] and add that to your array. But this usually is not necessary.
In your case, since you have no delimiter, you have to get separate chars by
- (void)getCharacters:(unichar *)buffer range:(NSRange)aRange
or this one
- (unichar)characterAtIndex:(NSUInteger) index inside a loop.
That the only way I see, at the moment.
Don't know if this works for what you want to do but:
const char *foo = [myString UTF8String]
char third_character = foo[2];
Make sure to read the docs on UTF8String

How a get a part of the string from main String in Objective C

I have mainString from which i need to get the part of the string after finding a keyword.
NSString *mainString = "Hi how are you GET=dsjghdsghghdsjkghdjkhsg";
now I need to get the string after the keyword "GET=".
Waiting for a reply.
Have a look at the NSString documentation.
Assuming your string really is so totally straightforward, you could do something like this:
NSArray *components = [mainString componentsSeparatedByString: #"GET="];
NSString *stringYouWant = [components objectAtIndex: 1];
Obviously, this performs absolutely no error checking and makes a number of assumptions about the actual contents of mainString, but it should get you started.
Note, also, that the code is somewhat defensive in that it assumes that you are looking for GET= and not separating on =. Either way is a hack in terms of parsing, but... hey... hacks are sometimes the right answer.
You can use a regex via RegexKitLite:
NSString *mainString = #"Hi how are you GET=dsjghdsghghdsjkghdjkhsg";
NSString *matchedString = [mainString stringByMatching:#"GET=(.*)" capture:1L];
// matchedString == #"dsjghdsghghdsjkghdjkhsg";
The regex used, GET=(.*), basically says "Look for GET=, and then grab everything after that". The () specifies a capture group, which are useful for extracting just part of a match. Capture groups begin at 1, with capture group 0 being "the entire match". The part inside the capture group, .*, says "Match any character (the .) zero or more times (the *)".
If the string, in this case mainString, is not matched by the regex, then matchedString will be NULL.
You can get the location of the first occurrence of = and then just take a substring of mainString from the location of = to the end of the string.