Question

I would like to compare different strings and neither isEqualToString nor rangeOfString can, in my case, do the work apparently.

For example I have the following strings:

s1 = Hello World
s2 = World

I now would like to compare these and that works fine with rangeOfString, return true, the issue is when i then compare for example this:

s1 = helloworldhello
s2 = world

this should in my case return false but rangeOfString will return true.

The condition are the following:

I want to find exact matches.
I want to find similar strings for example "Anna" should be equal to "Hanna Anna"
I do not want to find half words for example "Ann" should not be equal to "Anna"
I do not want to find a part of a word for example "nn" should not be equal to "Anna"

Answer 1

In the case you are looking for “World” as a single word use range with a regular expression:

NSString *s1;
NSString *s2;
NSRange range;

s1 = @"Hello World";
s2 = @"World";
range = [s1 rangeOfString:s2 options:NSRegularExpressionSearch];
NSLog(@"match: %i", range.location != NSNotFound);

NSLog output:
match: 1

s1 = @"helloworldhello";
s2 = @"\\bworld\\b";
range = [s1 rangeOfString:s2 options:NSRegularExpressionSearch];
NSLog(@"match: %i", range.location != NSNotFound);

NSLog output:
match: 0

s1 = @"Hanna Anna";
s2 = @"\\bAnna\\b";
range = [s1 rangeOfString:s2 options:NSRegularExpressionSearch];
NSLog(@"match: %i", range.location != NSNotFound);

NSLog output:
match: 1

s1 = @"Anna";
s2 = @"\\bAnn\\b";
range = [s1 rangeOfString:s2 options:NSRegularExpressionSearch];
NSLog(@"match: %i", range.location != NSNotFound);

NSLog output:
match: 0

s1 = @"Anna";
s2 = @"\\bnn\\b";
range = [s1 rangeOfString:s2 options:NSRegularExpressionSearch];
NSLog(@"match: %i", range.location != NSNotFound);

NSLog output:
match: 0

The backslash-b means a word boundary and the backslash must be escaped.