Detecting if NSString contains chinese characters

Question

I have an UISearchBar, and I want my data to be sorted by pinYin if the user inputs English, and sorted by the characters themselves when the user inputs Chinese characters.

Is there something like

if (searchText isKindofClass: UTF-8String) 

to detect if an NSString contains Chinese characters?

Answer 1

You can use a NSRegularExpression to search for "character families" :

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Foundation/Reference/NSRegularExpression_Class/Reference/Reference.html

http://userguide.icu-project.org/strings/regexp

They give an example of \p{script=cyrillic}, I guess by searching a little you'll find something related to Chinese.

Answer 2

If you use \p{script=Han} to detecting Chinese, be sure to add '\' before \p. So it is like

NSRegularExpression *regex = [NSRegularExpression regularExpressionWithPattern:@"\\\p{Script=Han}" options:NSRegularExpressionCaseInsensitive error:&error];