How to find out if letter is Alphanumeric or Digit in Swift

I want to count the number of letters, digits and special characters in the following string:

let phrase = "The final score was 32-31!"

I tried:

for tempChar in phrase {
    if (tempChar >= "a" && tempChar <= "z") {
       letterCounter++
    }
// etc.

but I'm getting errors. I tried all sorts of other variations on this - still getting error - such as:

could not find an overload for '<=' that accepts the supplied arguments

Solution 1:

For Swift 5 see rustylepord's answer.

Update for Swift 3:

let letters = CharacterSet.letters
let digits = CharacterSet.decimalDigits

var letterCount = 0
var digitCount = 0

for uni in phrase.unicodeScalars {
    if letters.contains(uni) {
        letterCount += 1
    } else if digits.contains(uni) {
        digitCount += 1
    }
}

(Previous answer for older Swift versions)

A possible Swift solution:

var letterCounter = 0
var digitCount = 0
let phrase = "The final score was 32-31!"
for tempChar in phrase.unicodeScalars {
    if tempChar.isAlpha() {
        letterCounter++
    } else if tempChar.isDigit() {
        digitCount++
    }
}

Update: The above solution works only with characters in the ASCII character set, i.e. it does not recognize Ä, é or ø as letters. The following alternative solution uses NSCharacterSet from the Foundation framework, which can test characters based on their Unicode character classes:

let letters = NSCharacterSet.letterCharacterSet()
let digits = NSCharacterSet.decimalDigitCharacterSet()

var letterCount = 0
var digitCount = 0

for uni in phrase.unicodeScalars {
    if letters.longCharacterIsMember(uni.value) {
        letterCount++
    } else if digits.longCharacterIsMember(uni.value) {
        digitCount++
    }
}

Update 2: As of Xcode 6 beta 4, the first solution does not work anymore, because the isAlpha() and related (ASCII-only) methods have been removed from Swift. The second solution still works.

Solution 2:

Use the values of unicodeScalars

let phrase = "The final score was 32-31!"
var letterCounter = 0, digitCounter = 0
for scalar in phrase.unicodeScalars {
    let value = scalar.value
    if (value >= 65 && value <= 90) || (value >= 97 && value <= 122) {++letterCounter}
    if (value >= 48 && value <= 57) {++digitCounter}
}
println(letterCounter)
println(digitCounter)

Solution 3:

For Swift 5 you can do the following for simple strings, but be vigilant about handling characters like "1️⃣" , "④" these would be treated as numbers as well.

let phrase = "The final score was 32-31!"

var numberOfDigits = 0;
var numberOfLetters = 0;
var numberOfSymbols = 0;

phrase.forEach {

    if ($0.isNumber) {
        numberOfDigits += 1;
    }
    else if ($0.isLetter)  {
        numberOfLetters += 1
    }
    else if ($0.isSymbol || $0.isPunctuation || $0.isCurrencySymbol || $0.isMathSymbol) {
        numberOfSymbols += 1;
    }
}

print(#"\#(numberOfDigits)  || \#(numberOfLetters) || \#(numberOfSymbols)"#);