Unable to replace string in Swift

Question

Trying to escape few special characters of string for sending it via xml api.

Tried below code but not working for all the occurrences of Single Quote (') and Double Quote (")

var strToReturn = "“Hello” ‘world’"
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "&", with: "&amp;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "<", with: "&lt;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: ">", with: "&gt;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "‘", with: "&apos;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "“", with: "&quot;") 

print("Replaced string : \(strToReturn)")

Result is "Hello” 'world’

If anyone can help, thanks!

For anyone wondering how the _Single_ and _Double quotes_ inside the strings are generated --- Hold down **alt/option** and press **Square / Curly bracket** keys — Shubham Bakshi, Oct 18 '18 at 11:43
have a look for Quotation marks replace --- https://stackoverflow.com/a/37385081/4970453 — Varinder Singh iPhone Dev, Oct 18 '18 at 11:56

Kamran · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-20T19:27:06.553

10

You need to specify replacement strings for ’ and ” because ’ != ‘ and ” != “

var strToReturn = "“Hello” ‘world’"
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "&", with: "&amp;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "<", with: "&lt;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: ">", with: "&gt;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "‘", with: "&apos;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "“", with: "&quot;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "’", with: "&apos;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "”", with: "&quot;")

edited Oct 20 '18 at 19:27

answered Oct 18 '18 at 11:48

Kamran

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1

Silly mistake.. My bad. Noted, thanks for the help. It worked !! – Dhaval H. Nena Oct 18 '18 at 13:19
Still mistake, self.replacingOccurrences(of: "‘", with: "'") fixed the issue – Metin Atalay Apr 24 '23 at 09:27

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 18 '18 at 11:49

The reason for this is because ” is different than “ and ’ is different than ‘. So you need to add these lines too.

strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "’", with: "&apos;")
strToReturn = strToReturn.replacingOccurrences(of: "”", with: "&quot;")

This will give you the expected result

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 18 '18 at 12:00

If you print the ascii values of the string you will see the quotes are not the same unicode character. So make sure you use the same unicode character or handle both case

strToReturn.characters.map{print($0, "\(String($0.unicodeScalars.first!.value, radix: 16, uppercase: true))")}

“ 201C
H 48
e 65
l 6C
l 6C
o 6F
” 201D
  20
‘ 2018
w 77
o 6F
r 72
l 6C
d 64
’ 2019

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 18 '18 at 11:49

Your code is working perfectly fine with me . I just changed the strings as I mentioned in the comments :

For anyone wondering how the Single and Double quotes inside the strings are generated --- Hold down alt/option and press Square / Curly bracket keys

Just change the letters using the key combination and it will work

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 24 '23 at 12:28

the below extension is very useful

 var toReplaceSmartQuotes: String {
        return self.replacingOccurrences(of: "‘", with: "'").replacingOccurrences(of: "’", with: "'")
            .replaceCharacters(characters: "”", toSeparator: #"""#)
    }
    
    func replaceCharacters(characters: String, toSeparator: String) -> String {
        let characterSet = CharacterSet(charactersIn: characters)
        let components = components(separatedBy: characterSet)
        let result = components.joined(separator: toSeparator)
        return result
    }

It say : Use of local variable 'components' before its declaration — Ucdemir, Jul 02 '23 at 10:08

Unable to replace string in Swift

5 Answers5

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