Extra characters in NSScanner (objective-C)

Question

I have a small problem parsing a string in NSScanner. I've read other SO posts on this, but cannot solve this dumb issue.

I have a string like this "the first word is not = to the second word"

My code is:

NSString *seperator = @" =";
NSCharacterSet *newLineCharacterSet = [NSCharacterSet newlineCharacterSet];


[scanner scanUpToString:seperator intoString:&firstString];
[scanner scanString:seperator intoString:NULL];
scanPosition = [scanner scanLocation];
//scanPosition = scanPosition +2;

secondString = [[scanner string] substringFromIndex:scanPosition];

[scanner scanUpToCharactersFromSet:newLineCharacterSet intoString:&secondString];

NSLog(@"firstString: %@", firstString);
NSLog(@"secondString: %@", secondString);

The problem is that I'm getting the separator as part of the secondString.

firstString: "the first word is not"
secondString is "= to the second word"

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 11 '14 at 16:33

1

So you want to separate the strings? You can use NSString's componentsSeparatedByString method.

NSArray* foo = [@"the first word is not = to the second word" componentsSeparatedByString: @"="];

NSString *firstString = foo[0]; //the first word is not 
NSString *secondString = foo[1]; // to the second word

If you want to use the scanner you will have to move the scanner's position past the separator, as you have commented out in your code.

answered Aug 11 '14 at 16:33

KerrM

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Thank's for the great answer, but I wanted to stick with the scanner as I want to do some more filtering ... so +1 but I gave the close to the first time poster... – ICL1901 Aug 11 '14 at 18:28

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 11 '14 at 16:57

Here's what I ran in Xcode:

NSString *seperator = @" =";
NSCharacterSet *newLineCharacterSet = [NSCharacterSet newlineCharacterSet];

NSScanner *scanner = [NSScanner localizedScannerWithString:@"the first word is not = to the second word"];

//NSString *firstString; //= @"the first word is not = to the second word";
NSString *secondString;
int scanPosition;
NSString *foundSubs;

[scanner scanUpToString:seperator intoString:&foundSubs];
//[scanner scanString:seperator intoString:NULL];
scanPosition = [scanner scanLocation];
//scanPosition = scanPosition +2;

secondString = [[scanner string] substringFromIndex:scanPosition+[seperator length]];

//[scanner scanUpToCharactersFromSet:newLineCharacterSet intoString:&secondString];

NSLog(@"firstString: %@", foundSubs);
NSLog(@"secondString: %@", secondString);

And got:

2014-08-11 11:56:10.495 tester[3068:60b] firstString: the first word is not
2014-08-11 11:56:10.496 tester[3068:60b] secondString:  to the second word

For the sake of posterity check 'seperator' spelling

Thanks a ton, and welcome to SO. Great answer and much appreciated. I was hoping that the world would change the spelling of seperator, but I guess it's not to be.... — ICL1901, Aug 11 '14 at 18:24

Extra characters in NSScanner (objective-C)

2 Answers2