StructureSwift

    Substring

    A slice of a string.

    @frozen struct Substring

    Overview

    When you create a slice of a string, a Substring instance is the result. Operating on substrings is fast and efficient because a substring shares its storage with the original string. The Substring type presents the same interface as String, so you can avoid or defer any copying of the string’s contents.

    The following example creates a greeting string, and then finds the substring of the first sentence:

    let greeting = "Hi there! It's nice to meet you! đź‘‹"
let endOfSentence = greeting.firstIndex(of: "!")!
let firstSentence = greeting[...endOfSentence]
// firstSentence == "Hi there!"

    You can perform many string operations on a substring. Here, we find the length of the first sentence and create an uppercase version.

    print("'\(firstSentence)' is \(firstSentence.count) characters long.")
// Prints "'Hi there!' is 9 characters long."

let shoutingSentence = firstSentence.uppercased()
// shoutingSentence == "HI THERE!"

    Converting a Substring to a String

    This example defines a rawData string with some unstructured data, and then uses the string’s prefix(while:) method to create a substring of the numeric prefix:

    let rawInput = "126 a.b 22219 zzzzzz"
let numericPrefix = rawInput.prefix(while: { "0"..."9" ~= $0 })
// numericPrefix is the substring "126"

    When you need to store a substring or pass it to a function that requires a String instance, you can convert it to a String by using the String(_:) initializer. Calling this initializer copies the contents of the substring to a new string.

    func parseAndAddOne(_ s: String) -> Int {
    return Int(s, radix: 10)! + 1
}
_ = parseAndAddOne(numericPrefix)
// error: cannot convert value...
let incrementedPrefix = parseAndAddOne(String(numericPrefix))
// incrementedPrefix == 127

    Alternatively, you can convert the function that takes a String to one that is generic over the StringProtocol protocol. The following code declares a generic version of the parseAndAddOne(_:) function:

    func genericParseAndAddOne<S: StringProtocol>(_ s: S) -> Int {
    return Int(s, radix: 10)! + 1
}
let genericallyIncremented = genericParseAndAddOne(numericPrefix)
// genericallyIncremented == 127

    You can call this generic function with an instance of either String or Substring.

    Members

    Typealiases

    • typealias Index

      A type that represents a position in the collection.

    • typealias SubSequence

      A collection representing a contiguous subrange of this collection’s elements. The subsequence shares indices with the original collection.

    RegexBuilder

    Initializers

    Instance Subscripts

    Instance Properties

    RegexBuilder

    Instance Methods

    Type Operators

    Structures

    Conforms To

    RegexBuilder

    Removed Members

    Typealiases

    Instance Properties

    Instance Methods