Swift: How to get substring from start to last index of character

Question

I want to learn the best/simplest way to turn a string into another string but with only a subset, starting at the beginning and going to the last index of a character.

Answer 1

I've modified andrewz' post to make it compatible with Swift 2.0 (and maybe Swift 3.0). In my humble opinion, this extension is easier to understand and similar to what is available in other languages (like PHP).

extension String {

    func length() -> Int {
        return self.lengthOfBytesUsingEncoding(NSUTF16StringEncoding)
    }
    func substring(from:Int = 0, to:Int = -1) -> String {
       var nto=to
        if nto < 0 {
            nto = self.length() + nto
        }
        return self.substringWithRange(Range(
           start:self.startIndex.advancedBy(from),
           end:self.startIndex.advancedBy(nto+1)))
    }
    func substring(from:Int = 0, length:Int) -> String {
        return self.substringWithRange(Range(
            start:self.startIndex.advancedBy(from),
            end:self.startIndex.advancedBy(from+length)))
    }
}