How to separate string by space using Objective-C?

Question

Assume that I have a String like this:

hello world       this may     have lots   of sp:ace or little      space

I would like to seperate this String to this:

@"hello", @"world", @"this", @"may", @"have", @"lots", @"of", @"sp:ace", @"or", @"little", @"space"

Thank you.

Your recipe is here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/758212/objective-c-strip-out-whitespace-from-nsstring/1427224#1427224 — EmptyStack, Jan 27 '11 at 09:39
I can't see, why this question is voted as "not a real question". The OP says what is given and what is needed to achieve. — vikingosegundo, Jan 27 '11 at 10:00

score 81 · Answer 1 · edited May 24 '19 at 18:25

81

NSString *aString = @"hello world       this may     have lots   of sp:ace or little      space";
NSArray *array = [aString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]];
array = [array filteredArrayUsingPredicate:[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF != ''"]];

edited May 24 '19 at 18:25

Zoe

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answered Jan 27 '11 at 09:54

vikingosegundo

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score 23 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 27 '11 at 10:03

I'd suggest a two-step aproach:

NSArray *wordsAndEmptyStrings = [yourLongString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]];
NSArray *words = [wordsAndEmptyStrings filteredArrayUsingPredicate:[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"length > 0"]];

score 22 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 16 '14 at 06:59

22

This has worked for me

NSString * str = @"Hi Hello How Are You ?";
NSArray * arr = [str componentsSeparatedByString:@" "];
NSLog(@"Array values are : %@",arr);

answered Apr 16 '14 at 06:59

Mohit

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What if the characters in the input string are separated by more than one space (as is the case in this question)? – Jon Schneider Mar 18 '21 at 17:38

score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 27 '11 at 09:39

It's very easy to do this with blocks, try something like this :

NSString* s = @"hello world       this may     have lots   of space or little      space";
NSMutableArray* ar = [NSMutableArray array];
[s enumerateSubstringsInRange:NSMakeRange(0, [s length]) options:NSStringEnumerationByWords usingBlock:^(NSString* word, NSRange wordRange, NSRange enclosingRange, BOOL* stop){
    [ar addObject:word];
}];

How to separate string by space using Objective-C?

4 Answers4

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