Extract values between parenthesis from NSString

Question

I have an NSString that will be something like "xxxx (yyyyy)" where x and y can be any character. I'd like to extract just the y from inside the parenthesis. I managed to extract the x using a NSScanner but I haven't figured out the proper way to extract out the y.

Answer 1

Easiest way would be to use RegExKit:

http://regexkit.sourceforge.net/

Then you'd do something like:

[@"xxxx(yyyyy)" getCapturesWithRegexAndReferences:@"\\((.*)\\)",@"$1", &extractedString,nil];

and extractedString would contain whatever was in parenthesis.

Answer 2

Scan up to the ‘(’, then scan it, then scan up to the ')'. The result of the last scan is yyyy.

Answer 3

you might have a look at PKTokenizer in ParseKit:

http://parsekit.com

Answer 4

Just to be complete:

If you are absolutely sure of the format of your output you can use the array methods:

NSString *inputString; // this is in the form "xxxx(yyyy)"

NSCharacterSet *delimiters = [NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@"()"];
NSArray *splitString = [inputString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:delimiters]

NSString *xString = [splitString objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *yString = [splitString ojbectAtIndex:1];

Of course, you need to be sure that the delimiting characters don’t exist in the inputString