Get nth character of a string in Swift programming language

Question

How can I get the nth character of a string? I tried bracket([]) accessor with no luck.

var string = \"Hello, world!\"

var firstChar = string[         


        

Answer 1

Swift's String type does not provide a characterAtIndex method because there are several ways a Unicode string could be encoded. Are you going with UTF8, UTF16, or something else?

You can access the CodeUnit collections by retrieving the String.utf8 and String.utf16 properties. You can also access the UnicodeScalar collection by retrieving the String.unicodeScalars property.

In the spirit of NSString's implementation, I'm returning a unichar type.

extension String
{
    func characterAtIndex(index:Int) -> unichar
    {
        return self.utf16[index]
    }

    // Allows us to use String[index] notation
    subscript(index:Int) -> unichar
    {
        return characterAtIndex(index)
    }
}

let text = "Hello Swift!"
let firstChar = text[0]