Get nth character of a string in Swift programming

Question

How can I get the nth character of a string? I tried bracket([]) accessor with no luck.

var string = "Hello, world!"

var firstChar = string[0] // Throws error

ERROR: 'subscript' is unavailable: cannot subscript String with an Int, see the documentation comment for discussion

Answer 1

There's an alternative, explained in String manifesto

extension String : BidirectionalCollection {
    subscript(i: Index) -> Character { return characters[i] }
}

Answer 2

Attention: Please see Leo Dabus' answer for a proper implementation for Swift 4.

Swift 4

The Substring type was introduced in Swift 4 to make substrings faster and more efficient by sharing storage with the original string, so that's what the subscript functions should return.

Try it out here

extension String {
  subscript (i: Int) -> Character {
    return self[index(startIndex, offsetBy: i)]
  }
  subscript (bounds: CountableRange<Int>) -> Substring {
    let start = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.lowerBound)
    let end = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.upperBound)
    return self[start ..< end]
  }
  subscript (bounds: CountableClosedRange<Int>) -> Substring {
    let start = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.lowerBound)
    let end = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.upperBound)
    return self[start ... end]
  }
  subscript (bounds: CountablePartialRangeFrom<Int>) -> Substring {
    let start = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.lowerBound)
    let end = index(endIndex, offsetBy: -1)
    return self[start ... end]
  }
  subscript (bounds: PartialRangeThrough<Int>) -> Substring {
    let end = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.upperBound)
    return self[startIndex ... end]
  }
  subscript (bounds: PartialRangeUpTo<Int>) -> Substring {
    let end = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.upperBound)
    return self[startIndex ..< end]
  }
}
extension Substring {
  subscript (i: Int) -> Character {
    return self[index(startIndex, offsetBy: i)]
  }
  subscript (bounds: CountableRange<Int>) -> Substring {
    let start = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.lowerBound)
    let end = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.upperBound)
    return self[start ..< end]
  }
  subscript (bounds: CountableClosedRange<Int>) -> Substring {
    let start = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.lowerBound)
    let end = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.upperBound)
    return self[start ... end]
  }
  subscript (bounds: CountablePartialRangeFrom<Int>) -> Substring {
    let start = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.lowerBound)
    let end = index(endIndex, offsetBy: -1)
    return self[start ... end]
  }
  subscript (bounds: PartialRangeThrough<Int>) -> Substring {
    let end = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.upperBound)
    return self[startIndex ... end]
  }
  subscript (bounds: PartialRangeUpTo<Int>) -> Substring {
    let end = index(startIndex, offsetBy: bounds.upperBound)
    return self[startIndex ..< end]
  }
}

To convert the Substring into a String, you can simply do String(string[0..2]), but you should only do that if you plan to keep the substring around. Otherwise, it's more efficient to keep it a Substring.

It would be great if someone could figure out a good way to merge these two extensions into one. I tried extending StringProtocol without success, because the index method does not exist there.

 

Swift 3:

extension String {
  subscript (i: Int) -> Character {
    return self[index(startIndex, offsetBy: i)]
  }
  subscript (i: Int) -> String {
    return String(self[i] as Character)
  }
  subscript (r: Range<Int>) -> String {
    let start = index(startIndex, offsetBy: r.lowerBound)
    let end = index(startIndex, offsetBy: r.upperBound)
    return self[Range(start ..< end)]
  }
}

 

Why is this not built-in?

Apple provides the following explanation (found here):

Subscripting strings with integers is not available.

The concept of "the ith character in a string" has different interpretations in different libraries and system components. The correct interpretation should be selected according to the use case and the APIs involved, so String cannot be subscripted with an integer.

Swift provides several different ways to access the character data stored inside strings.

• String.utf8 is a collection of UTF-8 code units in the string. Use this API when converting the string to UTF-8. Most POSIX APIs process strings in terms of UTF-8 code units.

• String.utf16 is a collection of UTF-16 code units in string. Most Cocoa and Cocoa touch APIs process strings in terms of UTF-16 code units. For example, instances of NSRange used with NSAttributedString and NSRegularExpression store substring offsets and lengths in terms of UTF-16 code units.

• String.unicodeScalars is a collection of Unicode scalars. Use this API when you are performing low-level manipulation of character data.

• String.characters is a collection of extended grapheme clusters, which are an approximation of user-perceived characters.

Note that when processing strings that contain human-readable text, character-by-character processing should be avoided to the largest extent possible. Use high-level locale-sensitive Unicode algorithms instead, for example, String.localizedStandardCompare(), String.localizedLowercaseString, String.localizedStandardRangeOfString() etc.

Answer 3

No indexing using integers, only using String.Index. Mostly with linear complexity. You can also create ranges from String.Index and get substrings using them.

Swift 3.0

let firstChar = someString[someString.startIndex]
let lastChar = someString[someString.index(before: someString.endIndex)]
let charAtIndex = someString[someString.index(someString.startIndex, offsetBy: 10)]

let range = someString.startIndex..<someString.index(someString.startIndex, offsetBy: 10)
let substring = someString[range]

Swift 2.x

let firstChar = someString[someString.startIndex]
let lastChar = someString[someString.endIndex.predecessor()]
let charAtIndex = someString[someString.startIndex.advanceBy(10)]

let range = someString.startIndex..<someString.startIndex.advanceBy(10)
let subtring = someString[range]

Note that you can't ever use an index (or range) created from one string to another string

let index10 = someString.startIndex.advanceBy(10)

//will compile
//sometimes it will work but sometimes it will crash or result in undefined behaviour
let charFromAnotherString = anotherString[index10]

Answer 4

As an aside note, there are a few functions applyable directly to the Character-chain representation of a String, like this:

var string = "Hello, playground"
let firstCharacter = string.characters.first // returns "H"
let lastCharacter = string.characters.last // returns "d"

The result is of type Character, but you can cast it to a String.

Or this:

let reversedString = String(string.characters.reverse())
// returns "dnuorgyalp ,olleH" 

:-)

Answer 5

In Swift 3

    let mystring = "Hello, world!"
    let stringToArray = Array(mystring.characters)

    let indices = (stringToArray.count)-1

    print(stringToArray[0]) //H
    print(stringToArray[indices]) //!

Answer 6

Using characters would do the job. You can quickly convert the String to an array of characters that can be manipulated by the CharacterView methods.

Example:

let myString = "Hello World!"
let myChars  = myString.characters

(full CharacterView doc)

(tested in Swift 3)