macOS Counting character occurence in NSString

[StijnSpijker]

I'm just working on my very first Cocoa project. I already know a number of other languages such as C / C++ / C# / Java etc..

I'm actually trying to accomplish a simple task: Finding the number of occurences of the character '-' in an NSString. Now, I could write a 6 line while loop to do this for me, but to be honest, I expected the Cocoa framework to have a method for me?

I could only think of one alternative way: rangeOfCharacterFromSet. And then looping that until the end of the string (but this would be inferior to looping once, of course..).

Have I missed a vital search keyword on google (I could not find a -single- article about finding the number of occurences in an NSString)? I did find a some articles about having a CountedSet, but you would have to have an array? (Do I have to go back to char arrays??).

I would appreciate some hints as a first time user. Thanks!

 

[LostSoul80]

I'm just working on my very first Cocoa project. I already know a number of other languages such as C / C++ / C# / Java etc..

I'm actually trying to accomplish a simple task: Finding the number of occurences of the character '-' in an NSString. Now, I could write a 6 line while loop to do this for me, but to be honest, I expected the Cocoa framework to have a method for me?

I could only think of one alternative way: rangeOfCharacterFromSet. And then looping that until the end of the string (but this would be inferior to looping once, of course..).

Have I missed a vital search keyword on google (I could not find a -single- article about finding the number of occurences in an NSString)? I did find a some articles about having a CountedSet, but you would have to have an array? (Do I have to go back to char arrays??).

I would appreciate some hints as a first time user. Thanks!

Maybe this can be a workaround (put this in your NSString subclass)

- (NSInteger)occurrencesOfCharacter:(char *)c
{
    if (c == NULL) return -1;

    NSString * s = [NSString stringWithCString: c encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding]; // can be every encoding you want...
    if ([self isEqualToString: s]) return 1; // just to avoid useless work
    NSUInteger  cnt = [[self componentsSeparatedByString: s] count];
    return cnt - 1;
}

Hope that helps.

 

[StijnSpijker]

Maybe this can be a workaround (put this in your NSString subclass)

- (NSInteger)occurrencesOfCharacter:(char *)c
{
    if (c == NULL) return -1;

    NSString * s = [NSString stringWithCString: c encoding: NSUTF8StringEncoding]; // can be every encoding you want...
    if ([self isEqualToString: s]) return 1; // just to avoid useless work
    NSUInteger  cnt = [[self componentsSeparatedByString: s] count];
    return cnt - 1;
}

Hope that helps.

Thanks!
But I think that writing the while loop myself requires less lines of code, and has WAY better readability ..

I conclude from this post that there is no such method in the framework, and will write my own helper class..

 

[kainjow]

Shorter version

- (int)occurrencesOfString:(NSString *)str
{
    return [[self componentsSeparatedByString:str] count]-1;
}

I'd avoid using chars directly if working with NSStrings.