I have to do validation to check user entered answer to an application. I want to remove spaces (if any) left or before for bellow special characters.
- /
- ,
- :
- ;
- -
- .
So the final output should be like this.
Ex:
Correct answer => a/b
Answers need to accept => ' a/b ', 'a/ b', 'a /b', 'a/ b ', 'a/b '
I can do this using replacingOccurrences function by replacing all possible values. Is there any better solution for this?
You can using regular expression for replace the string with format [ ]+{special_char} and {special_char}[ ]+.
Edit
Update "." to "\\."
Thanks ielyamani
For example
func acceptedAnswer(of answer: String) -> String { let specialChars = ["/", ":", ",", ";", "-", "\\."] var newAnswer = answer.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespacesAndNewlines) for specialChar in specialChars { let beforeCharRegex = "[ ]+" + specialChar let afterCharRegex = specialChar + "[ ]+" newAnswer = newAnswer.replacingOccurrences(of: beforeCharRegex, with: specialChar, options: .regularExpression, range: nil) newAnswer = newAnswer.replacingOccurrences(of: afterCharRegex, with: specialChar, options: .regularExpression, range: nil) } return newAnswer } print(acceptedAnswer(of: " apple / orange : banana ")) // apple/orange:banana 
"\\." instead of "."
You can use replacingOccurrences which would replace your symbol with whitespaces with just this symbol. For this purpose you can use recursive method
func removed(in text: String) -> String { let symbols = ["/", ",", ":", ";", "-", "."] var newText = text symbols.forEach { newText = replaced(in: newText, for: $0) } return newText } func replaced(in text: String, for symbol: String) -> String { var newText = text let left = " \(symbol)" newText = newText.replacingOccurrences(of: left, with: symbol) let right = "\(symbol) " newText = newText.replacingOccurrences(of: right, with: symbol) return newText != text ? replaced(in: newText, for: symbol) : newText } Usage:
let string = "Apple / Orange Swift . ObjC Moon : Sun USA - UK" print(removed(in: string)) Apple/Orange Swift.ObjC Moon:Sun USA-UK
Remove before and after space of Special character using Range -
let specialChars = ["/",":", ",", ";", "-", "."] let aString = " AB / CD EF ; G : H , MN O - P" var trimmedString = aString.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespacesAndNewlines) for specialChar in specialChars { if let beforeSpacerange = trimmedString.range(of: " \(specialChar)") { trimmedString.replaceSubrange(beforeSpacerange, with: specialChar) } if let afterSpacerange = trimmedString.range(of: "\(specialChar) ") { trimmedString.replaceSubrange(afterSpacerange, with: specialChar) } } debugPrint(trimmedString) Hope it will help you. Let me know if you are still having any issue.
Happy coding.
