How do I check if a string contains another string in Objective-C?

Question

How can I check if a string (NSString) contains another smaller string?

I was hoping for something like:

NSString *string = @\"hello bla         


        

Answer 1

So personally I really hate NSNotFound but understand its necessity.

But some people may not understand the complexities of comparing against NSNotFound

For example, this code:

- (BOOL)doesString:(NSString*)string containString:(NSString*)otherString {
    if([string rangeOfString:otherString].location != NSNotFound)
        return YES;
    else
        return NO;
}

has its problems:

1) Obviously if otherString = nil this code will crash. a simple test would be:

NSLog(@"does string contain string - %@", [self doesString:@"hey" containString:nil] ? @"YES": @"NO");

results in !! CRASH !!

2) What is not so obvious to someone new to objective-c is that the same code will NOT crash when string = nil. For example, this code:

NSLog(@"does string contain string - %@", [self doesString:nil containString:@"hey"] ? @"YES": @"NO");

and this code:

NSLog(@"does string contain string - %@", [self doesString:nil containString:nil] ? @"YES": @"NO");

will both result in

does string contains string - YES

Which is clearly NOT what you want.

So the better solution that I believe works is to use the fact that rangeOfString returns the length of 0 so then a better more reliable code is this:

- (BOOL)doesString:(NSString*)string containString:(NSString*)otherString {
    if(otherString && [string rangeOfString:otherString].length)
        return YES;
    else
        return NO;
}

OR SIMPLY:

- (BOOL)doesString:(NSString*)string containString:(NSString*)otherString {
    return (otherString && [string rangeOfString:otherString].length);
}

which will for cases 1 and 2 will return

does string contains string - NO

That's my 2 cents ;-)

Please check out my Gist for more helpful code.