Question

I want to search my NSArray object for some strings which contain a particular sequence of letters at any position. It should be similar to something like the “LIKE operator” we use in database. For example, I want to search for all the string containing ‘ab’ in my NSArray object.

Answer 1

Assuming you have an array of NSString objects…

NSArray *array = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"String one", @"String two", @"String three", nil];
for (NSString *string in array)
{
    if ([string rangeOfString:@"XYZ"].location != NSNotFound)
        NSLog (@"Found one: %@", string);            
}

[edit]

To add that you can also use the rangeOfString:options: method if you need to case insensitive searches amongst others.