Question

I want to check if a user backspaces a character in a textView if there are any of that same character connecting it for it to delete them all…

For example if the character I’m checking for is “e” I have the text “easy heeeeeello” and the user starts hitting backspace it will become:

easy heeeeeello -> easy heeeeeell -> easy heeeeeel -> easy heeeeee -> easy h

The code should detect that a backspace was pressed.
Then it will detect which text is going to be deleted, and if that text is a character (in our case “e”) it will check if there are more “e”s touching that “e” creating a strand of “e”s and delete them all.

Can you help me?

Answer 1

OK, so I wrote this code, and it works for me

-(BOOL)textView:(UITextView *)textView shouldChangeTextInRange:(NSRange)range replacementText:(NSString *)text {
    if([text isEqualToString:@""]) {
    //Detected backspace character as the new character is @"" meaning something will be deleted

        char toDelete = [textView.text characterAtIndex:range.location];

        int duplicateCharCount = 0;
        for(int i =range.location-1; i>=0; i--) {

            if([textView.text characterAtIndex:i] == toDelete) {
                duplicateCharCount++;
            } else {
                break;
            }  
        }

        NSRange newRange = NSMakeRange(0, range.location - duplicateCharCount);
        [textView setText:[textView.text substringWithRange:newRange]];

        return NO;
    } else {
        return YES;
    }
}

I know its not the best implementation, but now you know how to proceed

Hope this helps