NSString - Convert to pure alphabet only (i.e. remove accents+punctuation)

Question

I\'m trying to compare names without any punctuation, spaces, accents etc. At the moment I am doing the following:

-(NSString*) prepareString:(NSString*)a {
         


        

Answer 1

@interface NSString (Filtering)
    - (NSString*)stringByFilteringCharacters:(NSCharacterSet*)charSet;
@end

@implementation NSString (Filtering)
    - (NSString*)stringByFilteringCharacters:(NSCharacterSet*)charSet {
      NSMutableString * mutString = [NSMutableString stringWithCapacity:[self length]];
      for (int i = 0; i < [self length]; i++){
        char c = [self characterAtIndex:i];
        if(![charSet characterIsMember:c]) [mutString appendFormat:@"%c", c];
      }
      return [NSString stringWithString:mutString];
    }
@end