Split a String into an array in Swift?

**Swift 4**

let words = "these words will be elements in an array".components(separatedBy: " ")

## The whitespace issue

Generally, people reinvent this problem and bad solutions over and over. Is this a space? " " and what about "\n", "\t" or some unicode whitespace character that you've never seen, in no small part because it is invisible. While you can get away with

### A weak solution
import Foundation
let pieces = "Mary had little lamb".componentsSeparatedByString(" ")

If you ever need to shake your grip on reality watch a WWDC video on strings or dates. In short, it is almost always better to allow Apple to solve this kind of mundane task.

## Robust Solution: Use NSCharacterSet

The way to do this correctly, IMHO, is to use `NSCharacterSet` since as stated earlier your whitespace might not be what you expect and Apple has provided a whitespace character set. To explore the various provided character sets check out Apple's [NSCharacterSet developer documentation][1] and then, only then, augment or construct a new character set if it doesn't fit your needs.

### NSCharacterSet whitespaces

> Returns a character set containing the characters in Unicode General
> Category Zs and CHARACTER TABULATION (U+0009).

let longerString: String = "This is a test of the character set splitting system"
let components = longerString.components(separatedBy: .whitespaces)
print(components)

[1]:

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var fullName = "James Keagan Michael"
let first = fullName.components(separatedBy: " ").first?.isEmpty == false ? fullName.components(separatedBy: " ").first! : "John"
let last = fullName.components(separatedBy: " ").last?.isEmpty == false && fullName.components(separatedBy: " ").last != fullName.components(separatedBy: " ").first ? fullName.components(separatedBy: " ").last! : "Doe"

- Disallow same first and last name
- If a fullname is invalid, take placeholder value "John Doe"

I had a scenario where multiple control characters can be present in the string I want to split. Rather than maintain an array of these, I just let Apple handle that part.

The following works with Swift 3.0.1 on iOS 10:

let myArray = myString.components(separatedBy: .controlCharacters)

Let's say you have a variable named "Hello World" and if you want to split it and store it into two different variables you can use like this:

var fullText = "Hello World"
let firstWord = fullText.text?.components(separatedBy: " ").first
let lastWord = fullText.text?.components(separatedBy: " ").last

Swift 4 makes it much easier to split characters, just use the new split function for Strings.

Example:
```
let s = "hi, hello"
let a = s.split(separator: ",")
print(a)
```

Now you got an array with 'hi' and ' hello'.

**Swift 4**

let string = "loremipsum.dolorsant.amet:"

let result = string.components(separatedBy: ".")

print(result[0])
print(result[1])
print(result[2])
print("total: \(result.count)")

**Output**

loremipsum
dolorsant
amet:
total: 3

I was looking for *loosy* split, such as PHP's `explode` where empty sequences are included in resulting array, this worked for me:

"First ".split(separator: " ", maxSplits: 1, omittingEmptySubsequences: false)

**Output:**

["First", ""]

You can use this common function and add any string which you want to separate



func separateByString(String wholeString: String, byChar char:String) -> [String] {

let resultArray = wholeString.components(separatedBy: char)
return resultArray
}

var fullName: String = "First Last"
let array = separateByString(String: fullName, byChar: " ")
var firstName: String = array[0]
var lastName: String = array[1]
print(firstName)
print(lastName)

This is for String and CSV file for swift 4.2 at 20181206 1610


var dataArray : [[String]] = []
let path = Bundle.main.path(forResource: "csvfilename", ofType: "csv")
let url = URL(fileURLWithPath: path!)
do {
let data = try Data(contentsOf: url)
let content = String(data: data, encoding: .utf8)
let parsedCSV = content?.components(separatedBy: "\r\n").map{ $0.components(separatedBy: ";") }
for line in parsedCSV!
{
dataArray.append(line)
}
}
catch let jsonErr {
print("\n Error read CSV file: \n ", jsonErr)
}

print("\n MohNada 20181206 1610 - The final result is \(dataArray) \n ")