Swift - Remove " character from string

Question

I have a string which is "Optional("5")". I need to remove the "" surrounding the 5. I have removed the Optional by doing:

text2 = text2.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("Optional(", withString: "", options: NSStringCompareOptions.LiteralSearch, range: nil)

I am having difficulties removing the " characters as they designate the end of a string in the code.

Answer 1

💡 You can eighter escape characters with a \ or use # and here is how:

---

Swift 5

ou can use # symbol to specify a custom string delimiter.

When you use # with a string it affects the way Swift understands special characters in the string: \ no longer acts as an escape character, so \n literally means a “backslash“ than an “n” rather than a line break, and \(variable) will be included as those characters rather than using string interpolation.

So, these two strings are identical:

let regularString = "Optional(\"5\")"

let rawString = #"Optional("5")"#

Answer 2

Swift 5 (working). Only 1 line code.

For removing single / multiple characters.

trimmingCharacters(in: CharacterSet)

In action:

var yourString:String = "(\"This Is: Your String\")"
yourString = yourString.trimmingCharacters(in: ["("," ",":","\"",")"])
print(yourString)

Output:

ThisIsYourString

You are entering a Set that contains characters you're required to trim.

Answer 3

If you are getting the output Optional(5) when trying to print the value of 5 in an optional Int or String, you should unwrap the value first:

if value != nil
{ print(value)
}

or you can use this:

if let value = text {
    print(value)
}

or in simple just 1 line answer:

print(value ?? "")

The last line will check if variable 'value' has any value assigned to it, if not it will print empty string

Answer 4

Replacing for Removing is not quite logical. String.filter allows to iterate a string char by char and keep only true assertion.

Swift 4 & 5

var aString = "Optional(\"5\")"

aString = aString.filter { $0 != "\"" }

> Optional(5)

Or to extend

var aString = "Optional(\"5\")"

let filteredChars = "\"\n\t"

aString = aString.filter { filteredChars.range(of: String($0)) == nil }

> Optional(5)

Answer 5

Here is the swift 3 updated answer

var editedText = myLabel.text?.replacingOccurrences(of: "\"", with: "")

Null Character (\0)
Backslash (\\)
Horizontal Tab (\t)
Line Feed (\n)
Carriage Return (\r)
Double Quote (\")
Single Quote (\')
Unicode scalar (\u{n})

Answer 6

If you are getting the output Optional(5) when trying to print the value of 5 in an optional Int or String, you should unwrap the value first:

if let value = text {
    print(value)
}

Now you've got the value without the "Optional" string that Swift adds when the value is not unwrapped before.

Answer 7

If you want to remove more characters for example "a", "A", "b", "B", "c", "C" from string you can do it this way:

someString = someString.replacingOccurrences(of: "[abc]", with: "", options: [.regularExpression, .caseInsensitive])

Answer 8

Let's say you have a string:

var string = "potatoes + carrots"

And you want to replace the word "potatoes" in that string with "tomatoes"

string = string.replacingOccurrences(of: "potatoes", with: "tomatoes", options: NSString.CompareOptions.literal, range: nil)

If you print your string, it will now be: "tomatoes + carrots"

If you want to remove the word potatoes from the sting altogether, you can use:

string = string.replacingOccurrences(of: "potatoes", with: "", options: NSString.CompareOptions.literal, range: nil)

If you want to use some other characters in your sting, use:

• Null Character (\0)
• Backslash (\)
• Horizontal Tab (\t)
• Line Feed (\n)
• Carriage Return (\r)
• Double Quote (\")
• Single Quote (\')

Example:

string = string.replacingOccurrences(of: "potatoes", with: "dog\'s toys", options: NSString.CompareOptions.literal, range: nil)

Output: "dog's toys + carrots"

Answer 9

Swift uses backslash to escape double quotes. Here is the list of escaped special characters in Swift:

• \0 (null character)
• \\ (backslash)
• \t (horizontal tab)
• \n (line feed)
• \r (carriage return)
• \" (double quote)
• \' (single quote)

This should work:

text2 = text2.replacingOccurrences(of: "\\", with: "", options: NSString.CompareOptions.literal, range: nil)

Answer 10

Swift 3 and Swift 4:

text2 = text2.textureName.replacingOccurrences(of: "\"", with: "", options: NSString.CompareOptions.literal, range:nil)

Latest documents updated to Swift 3.0.1 have:

• Null Character (\0)
• Backslash (\\)
• Horizontal Tab (\t)
• Line Feed (\n)
• Carriage Return (\r)
• Double Quote (\")
• Single Quote (\')
• Unicode scalar (\u{n}), where n is between one and eight hexadecimal digits

If you need more details you can take a look to the official docs here

Answer 11

To remove the optional you only should do this

println("\(text2!)")

cause if you dont use "!" it takes the optional value of text2

And to remove "" from 5 you have to convert it to NSInteger or NSNumber easy peasy. It has "" cause its an string.

Answer 12

As Martin R says, your string "Optional("5")" looks like you did something wrong.

dasblinkenlight answers you so it is fine, but for future readers, I will try to add alternative code as:

if let realString = yourOriginalString {
    text2 = realString
} else {
    text2 = ""
}

text2 in your example looks like String and it is maybe already set to "" but it looks like you have an yourOriginalString of type Optional(String) somewhere that it wasn't cast or use correctly.

I hope this can help some reader.

Answer 13

I've eventually got this to work in the playground, having multiple characters I'm trying to remove from a string:

var otherstring = "lat\" : 40.7127837,\n"
var new = otherstring.stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet.init(charactersInString: "la t, \n \" ':"))
count(new) //result = 10
println(new) 
//yielding what I'm after just the numeric portion 40.7127837