Index of a substring in a string with Swift

edit/update:

Xcode 11.4 • Swift 5.2 or later

import Foundation

extension StringProtocol {
    func index<S: StringProtocol>(of string: S, options: String.CompareOptions = []) -> Index? {
        range(of: string, options: options)?.lowerBound
    }
    func endIndex<S: StringProtocol>(of string: S, options: String.CompareOptions = []) -> Index? {
        range(of: string, options: options)?.upperBound
    }
    func indices<S: StringProtocol>(of string: S, options: String.CompareOptions = []) -> [Index] {
        ranges(of: string, options: options).map(\.lowerBound)
    }
    func ranges<S: StringProtocol>(of string: S, options: String.CompareOptions = []) -> [Range<Index>] {
        var result: [Range<Index>] = []
        var startIndex = self.startIndex
        while startIndex < endIndex,
            let range = self[startIndex...]
                .range(of: string, options: options) {
                result.append(range)
                startIndex = range.lowerBound < range.upperBound ? range.upperBound :
                    index(range.lowerBound, offsetBy: 1, limitedBy: endIndex) ?? endIndex
        }
        return result
    }
}

usage:

let str = "abcde"
if let index = str.index(of: "cd") {
    let substring = str[..<index]   // ab
    let string = String(substring)
    print(string)  // "ab\n"
}

let str = "Hello, playground, playground, playground"
str.index(of: "play")      // 7
str.endIndex(of: "play")   // 11
str.indices(of: "play")    // [7, 19, 31]
str.ranges(of: "play")     // [{lowerBound 7, upperBound 11}, {lowerBound 19, upperBound 23}, {lowerBound 31, upperBound 35}]

case insensitive sample

let query = "Play"
let ranges = str.ranges(of: query, options: .caseInsensitive)
let matches = ranges.map { str[$0] }   //
print(matches)  // ["play", "play", "play"]

regular expression sample

let query = "play"
let escapedQuery = NSRegularExpression.escapedPattern(for: query)
let pattern = "\\b\(escapedQuery)\\w+"  // matches any word that starts with "play" prefix

let ranges = str.ranges(of: pattern, options: .regularExpression)
let matches = ranges.map { str[$0] }

print(matches) //  ["playground", "playground", "playground"]

Using String[Range<String.Index>] subscript you can get the sub string. You need starting index and last index to create the range and you can do it as below

let str = "abcde"
if let range = str.range(of: "cd") {
  let substring = str[..<range.lowerBound] // or str[str.startIndex..<range.lowerBound]
  print(substring)  // Prints ab
}
else {
  print("String not present")
}

If you don't define the start index this operator ..< , it take the starting index. You can also use str[str.startIndex..<range.lowerBound] instead of str[..<range.lowerBound]

Swift 5

Find index of substring

let str = "abcdecd"
if let range: Range<String.Index> = str.range(of: "cd") {
    let index: Int = str.distance(from: str.startIndex, to: range.lowerBound)
    print("index: ", index) //index: 2
}
else {
    print("substring not found")
}

Find index of Character

let str = "abcdecd"
if let firstIndex = str.firstIndex(of: "c") {
    let index = str.distance(from: str.startIndex, to: firstIndex)
    print("index: ", index)   //index: 2
}
else {
    print("symbol not found")
}

In Swift 4 :

Getting Index of a character in a string :

let str = "abcdefghabcd"
if let index = str.index(of: "b") {
   print(index) // Index(_compoundOffset: 4, _cache: Swift.String.Index._Cache.character(1))
}

Creating SubString (prefix and suffix) from String using Swift 4:

let str : String = "ilike"
for i in 0...str.count {
    let index = str.index(str.startIndex, offsetBy: i) // String.Index
    let prefix = str[..<index] // String.SubSequence
    let suffix = str[index...] // String.SubSequence
    print("prefix \(prefix), suffix : \(suffix)")
}

Output

prefix , suffix : ilike
prefix i, suffix : like
prefix il, suffix : ike
prefix ili, suffix : ke
prefix ilik, suffix : e
prefix ilike, suffix : 

If you want to generate a substring between 2 indices , use :

let substring1 = string[startIndex...endIndex] // including endIndex
let subString2 = string[startIndex..<endIndex] // excluding endIndex