I would like to get the start and end position of a substring within a string. Example: in the string "hi this is my name"; if I provide the string "this" I would like to know the start index is 4 and end index is 7.
I found several links, including this one:
Swift: get index of start of a substring in a string
a-substring-in-a-string
But it doesn´t work in swift 3 as the method is now called range.
I am now using this:
let range = mystring.range(of: "StringSearch")?.lowerBound
which returns this
Swift.String.UnicodeScalarView.Index(_position: 15), _countUTF16: 1))
And I cannot obtain the position as an integer as this is an index.
In summary, I would like to have in a variable of type int the position, in this case 15.
Can anyone help me?
Thanks everyone.
The distance(from:to:)
method of String
computes the difference
between two String.Index
values:
let mystring = "hi this is my name"
if let range = mystring.range(of: "this") {
let startPos = mystring.distance(from: mystring.startIndex, to: range.lowerBound)
let endPos = mystring.distance(from: mystring.startIndex, to: range.upperBound)
print(startPos, endPos) // 3 7
}
Actually it just forwards the call to the string's CharacterView
, so
the above gives the same result as
let mystring = "hi this is my name"
if let range = mystring.range(of: "this") {
let startPos = mystring.characters.distance(from: mystring.characters.startIndex, to: range.lowerBound)
let endPos = mystring.characters.distance(from: mystring.characters.startIndex, to: range.upperBound)
print(startPos, endPos) // 3 7
}
If you need all occurrences of the string:
let mystring = "this is this and that is that"
var searchPosition = mystring.startIndex
while let range = mystring.range(of: "this", range: searchPosition..<mystring.endIndex) {
let startPos = mystring.distance(from: mystring.startIndex, to: range.lowerBound)
let endPos = mystring.distance(from: mystring.startIndex, to: range.upperBound)
print(startPos, endPos)
searchPosition = range.upperBound
}
Adapted answer from Martin R into a function gives you the first occurrence as an NSRange
. You could turn this into an extension
of String
also.
public class func indexOf(string: String, substring: String) -> NSRange? {
if let range = string.range(of: substring) {
let startPos = string.distance(from: string.startIndex, to: range.lowerBound)
return NSMakeRange(startPos, substring.count)
}
}