Split a String into an Array in Swift?
Say I Have a String Here: Var fullName: String = "First Last" I Want to Split the String Base on White Space and Assign the Values to Their Respective...
Say I have a string here:
var fullName: String = "First Last"
I want to split the string base on white space and assign the values to their respective variables
var fullNameArr = // something like: fullName.explode(" ")
var firstName: String = fullNameArr[0]
var lastName: String? = fullnameArr[1]
Also, sometimes users might not have a last name.
40 Answers
Just call componentsSeparatedByString method on your fullName
import Foundation
var fullName: String = "First Last"
let fullNameArr = fullName.componentsSeparatedByString(" ")
var firstName: String = fullNameArr[0]
var lastName: String = fullNameArr[1]
Update for Swift 3+
import Foundation
let fullName = "First Last"
let fullNameArr = fullName.components(separatedBy: " ")
let name = fullNameArr[0]
let surname = fullNameArr[1]
The Swift way is to use the global split function, like so:
var fullName = "First Last"
var fullNameArr = split(fullName) {$0 == " "}
var firstName: String = fullNameArr[0]
var lastName: String? = fullNameArr.count > 1 ? fullNameArr[1] : nil
with Swift 2
In Swift 2 the use of split becomes a bit more complicated due to the introduction of the internal CharacterView type. This means that String no longer adopts the SequenceType or CollectionType protocols and you must instead use the .characters property to access a CharacterView type representation of a String instance. (Note: CharacterView does adopt SequenceType and CollectionType protocols).
let fullName = "First Last"
let fullNameArr = fullName.characters.split{$0 == " "}.map(String.init)
// or simply:
// let fullNameArr = fullName.characters.split{" "}.map(String.init)
fullNameArr[0] // First
fullNameArr[1] // Last
The easiest method to do this is by using componentsSeparatedBy:
For Swift 2:
import Foundation
let fullName : String = "First Last";
let fullNameArr : [String] = fullName.componentsSeparatedByString(" ")
// And then to access the individual words:
var firstName : String = fullNameArr[0]
var lastName : String = fullNameArr[1]
For Swift 3:
import Foundation
let fullName : String = "First Last"
let fullNameArr : [String] = fullName.components(separatedBy: " ")
// And then to access the individual words:
var firstName : String = fullNameArr[0]
var lastName : String = fullNameArr[1]
Swift Dev. 4.0 (May 24, 2017)
A new function split in Swift 4 (Beta).
import Foundation
let sayHello = "Hello Swift 4 2017";
let result = sayHello.split(separator: " ")
print(result)
Output:
["Hello", "Swift", "4", "2017"]
Accessing values:
print(result[0]) // Hello
print(result[1]) // Swift
print(result[2]) // 4
print(result[3]) // 2017
Xcode 8.1 / Swift 3.0.1
Here is the way multiple delimiters with array.
import Foundation
let mathString: String = "12-37*2/5"
let numbers = mathString.components(separatedBy: ["-", "*", "/"])
print(numbers)
Output:
["12", "37", "2", "5"]
Swift 4 or later
If you just need to properly format a person name, you can use PersonNameComponentsFormatter.
The PersonNameComponentsFormatter class provides localized representations of the components of a person’s name, as represented by a PersonNameComponents object. Use this class to create localized names when displaying person name information to the user.
// iOS (9.0 and later), macOS (10.11 and later), tvOS (9.0 and later), watchOS (2.0 and later)
let nameFormatter = PersonNameComponentsFormatter()
let name = "Mr. Steven Paul Jobs Jr."
// personNameComponents requires iOS (10.0 and later)
if let nameComps = nameFormatter.personNameComponents(from: name) {
nameComps.namePrefix // Mr.
nameComps.givenName // Steven
nameComps.middleName // Paul
nameComps.familyName // Jobs
nameComps.nameSuffix // Jr.
// It can also be configured to format your names
// Default (same as medium), short, long or abbreviated
nameFormatter.style = .default
nameFormatter.string(from: nameComps) // "Steven Jobs"
nameFormatter.style = .short
nameFormatter.string(from: nameComps) // "Steven"
nameFormatter.style = .long
nameFormatter.string(from: nameComps) // "Mr. Steven Paul Jobs jr."
nameFormatter.style = .abbreviated
nameFormatter.string(from: nameComps) // SJ
// It can also be use to return an attributed string using annotatedString method
nameFormatter.style = .long
nameFormatter.annotatedString(from: nameComps) // "Mr. Steven Paul Jobs jr."
}
edit/update:
Swift 5 or later
For just splitting a string by non letter characters we can use the new Character property isLetter:
let fullName = "First Last"
let components = fullName.split{ !$0.isLetter }
print(components) // "["First", "Last"]\n"
Update for Swift 5.2 and the simpliest way
let paragraph = "Bob hit a ball, the hit BALL flew far after it was hit. Hello! Hie, How r u?"
let words = paragraph.components(separatedBy: [",", " ", "!",".","?"])
This prints,
["Bob", "hit", "a", "ball", "", "the", "hit", "BALL", "flew", "far", "after", "it", "was", "hit", "", "Hello", "", "Hie", "", "How", "r", "u", ""]
However, if you want to filter out empty string,
let words = paragraph.components(separatedBy: [",", " ", "!",".","?"]).filter({!$0.isEmpty})
Output,
["Bob", "hit", "a", "ball", "the", "hit", "BALL", "flew", "far", "after", "it", "was", "hit", "Hello", "Hie", "How", "r", "u"]
But make sure, Foundation is imported.
As an alternative to WMios's answer, you can also use componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet, which can be handy in the case you have more separators (blank space, comma, etc.).
With your specific input:
let separators = NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: " ")
var fullName: String = "First Last";
var words = fullName.componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(separators)
// words contains ["First", "Last"]
Using multiple separators:
let separators = NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: " ,")
var fullName: String = "Last, First Middle";
var words = fullName.componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(separators)
// words contains ["Last", "First", "Middle"]
Swift 4
let words = "these words will be elements in an array".components(separatedBy: " ")
Must Read
The whitespace issue
Generally, people reinvent this problem and bad solutions over and over. Is this a space? " " and what about "\n", "\t" or some unicode whitespace character that you've never seen, in no small part because it is invisible. While you can get away with
A weak solution
import Foundation
let pieces = "Mary had little lamb".componentsSeparatedByString(" ")
If you ever need to shake your grip on reality watch a WWDC video on strings or dates. In short, it is almost always better to allow Apple to solve this kind of mundane task.