Question

I have a search string, where people can use quotes to group phrases together, and mix this with individual keywords. For example, a string like this:

"Something amazing" rooster

I’d like to separate that into an NSArray, so that it would have Something amazing (without quotes) as one element, and rooster as the other.

Neither componentsSeparatedByString nor componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet seem to fit the bill. Is there an easy way to do this, or should I just code it up myself?

Answer 1

I ended up going with a regular expression as I was already using RegexKitLite, and creating this NSString+SearchExtensions category.

.h:

//  NSString+SearchExtensions.h
#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
@interface NSString (SearchExtensions)
-(NSArray *)searchParts;
@end

.m:

//  NSString+SearchExtensions.m
#import "NSString+SearchExtensions.h"
#import "RegexKitLite.h"

@implementation NSString (SearchExtensions)

-(NSArray *)searchParts {
    __block NSMutableArray *items = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:5];

    [self enumerateStringsMatchedByRegex:@"\\w+|\"[\\w\\s]*\"" usingBlock: ^(NSInteger captureCount,
       NSString * const capturedStrings[captureCount],
       const NSRange capturedRanges[captureCount],
       volatile BOOL * const stop) {

        NSString *result = [capturedStrings[0] stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfRegex:@"\"" withString:@""];

        NSLog(@"Match: '%@'", result);
        [items addObject:result];
    }];        
    return [items autorelease];
}
@end

This returns an NSArray of strings with the search strings, removing the double quotes that surround the phrases.