NSCharacterSet.characterIsMember() with Swift’s Character type

Question

My understanding is that unichar is a typealias for UInt16. A unichar is just a number.

I think that the problem that you are facing is that a Character in Swift can be composed of more than one unicode “characters”. Thus, it cannot be converted to a single unichar value because it may be composed of two unichars. You can decompose a Character into its individual unichar values by casting it to a string and using the utf16 property, like this:

let c: Character = "a"
let s = String(c)
var codeUnits = [unichar]()
for codeUnit in s.utf16 {
    codeUnits.append(codeUnit)
}

This will produce an array – codeUnits – of unichar values.

EDIT: Initial code had for codeUnit in s when it should have been for codeUnit in s.utf16

You can tidy things up and test for whether or not each individual unichar value is in a character set like this:

let char: Character = "\u{63}\u{20dd}" // This is a 'c' inside of an enclosing circle
for codeUnit in String(char).utf16 {
    if NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: "c").characterIsMember(codeUnit) {
        dude.abide()
    } // dude will abide() for codeUnits[0] = "c", but not for codeUnits[1] = 0x20dd (the enclosing circle)
}

Or, if you are only interested in the first (and often only) unichar value:

if NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: "c").characterIsMember(String(char).utf16[0]) {
    dude.abide()
}

Or, wrap it in a function:

func isChar(char: Character, inSet set: NSCharacterSet) -> Bool {
    return set.characterIsMember(String(char).utf16[0])
}

let xSet = NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: "x")
isChar("x", inSet: xSet)  // This returns true
isChar("y", inSet: xSet)  // This returns false

Now make the function check for all unichar values in a composed character – that way, if you have a composed character, the function will only return true if both the base character and the combining character are present:

func isChar(char: Character, inSet set: NSCharacterSet) -> Bool {
    var found = true
    for ch in String(char).utf16 {
        if !set.characterIsMember(ch) { found = false }
    }
    return found
}

let acuteA: Character = "\u{e1}"                   // An "a" with an accent
let acuteAComposed: Character = "\u{61}\u{301}"    // Also an "a" with an accent

// A character set that includes both the composed and uncomposed unichar values
let charSet = NSCharacterSet(charactersInString: "\u{61}\u{301}\u{e1}")

isChar(acuteA, inSet: charSet)           // returns true
isChar(acuteAComposed, inSet: charSet)   // returns true (both unichar values were matched

The last version is important. If your Character is a composed character you have to check for the presence of both the base character (“a”) and the combining character (the acute accent) in the character set or you will get false positives.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply