Index of a substring in a string with Swift

Question

I\'m used to do this in JavaScript:

var domains = \"abcde\".substring(0, \"abcde\".indexOf(\"cd\")) // Returns \"ab\"

Swift doesn\'t have t

Answer 1

In Swift 4 :

Getting Index of a character in a string :

let str = "abcdefghabcd"
if let index = str.index(of: "b") {
   print(index) // Index(_compoundOffset: 4, _cache: Swift.String.Index._Cache.character(1))
}

Creating SubString (prefix and suffix) from String using Swift 4:

let str : String = "ilike"
for i in 0...str.count {
    let index = str.index(str.startIndex, offsetBy: i) // String.Index
    let prefix = str[..<index] // String.SubSequence
    let suffix = str[index...] // String.SubSequence
    print("prefix \(prefix), suffix : \(suffix)")
}

Output

prefix , suffix : ilike
prefix i, suffix : like
prefix il, suffix : ike
prefix ili, suffix : ke
prefix ilik, suffix : e
prefix ilike, suffix : 

If you want to generate a substring between 2 indices , use :

let substring1 = string[startIndex...endIndex] // including endIndex
let subString2 = string[startIndex..<endIndex] // excluding endIndex

Answer 2

In the Swift version 3, String doesn't have functions like -

str.index(of: String)

If the index is required for a substring, one of the ways to is to get the range. We have the following functions in the string which returns range -

str.range(of: <String>)
str.rangeOfCharacter(from: <CharacterSet>)
str.range(of: <String>, options: <String.CompareOptions>, range: <Range<String.Index>?>, locale: <Locale?>)

For example to find the indexes of first occurrence of play in str

var str = "play play play"
var range = str.range(of: "play")
range?.lowerBound //Result : 0
range?.upperBound //Result : 4

Note : range is an optional. If it is not able to find the String it will make it nil. For example

var str = "play play play"
var range = str.range(of: "zoo") //Result : nil
range?.lowerBound //Result : nil
range?.upperBound //Result : nil

Answer 3

Have you considered using NSRange?

if let range = mainString.range(of: mySubString) {
  //...
}

Answer 4

Using String[Range<String.Index>] subscript you can get the sub string. You need starting index and last index to create the range and you can do it as below

let str = "abcde"
if let range = str.range(of: "cd") {
  let substring = str[..<range.lowerBound] // or str[str.startIndex..<range.lowerBound]
  print(substring)  // Prints ab
}
else {
  print("String not present")
}

If you don't define the start index this operator ..< , it take the starting index. You can also use str[str.startIndex..<range.lowerBound] instead of str[..<range.lowerBound]

Answer 5

Swift 5

Find index of substring

let str = "abcdecd"
if let range: Range<String.Index> = str.range(of: "cd") {
    let index: Int = str.distance(from: str.startIndex, to: range.lowerBound)
    print("index: ", index) //index: 2
}
else {
    print("substring not found")
}

Find index of Character

let str = "abcdecd"
if let firstIndex = str.firstIndex(of: "c") {
    let index = str.distance(from: str.startIndex, to: firstIndex)
    print("index: ", index)   //index: 2
}
else {
    print("symbol not found")
}

Answer 6

Doing this in Swift is possible but it takes more lines, here is a function indexOf() doing what is expected:

func indexOf(source: String, substring: String) -> Int? {
    let maxIndex = source.characters.count - substring.characters.count
    for index in 0...maxIndex {
        let rangeSubstring = source.startIndex.advancedBy(index)..<source.startIndex.advancedBy(index + substring.characters.count)
        if source.substringWithRange(rangeSubstring) == substring {
            return index
        }
    }
    return nil
}

var str = "abcde"
if let indexOfCD = indexOf(str, substring: "cd") {
    let distance = str.startIndex.advancedBy(indexOfCD)
    print(str.substringToIndex(distance)) // Returns "ab"
}

This function is not optimized but it does the job for short strings.