Anyway to quickly break a word into an array of characters in objective c?

Question

For example: NSString *strWord = "english";

The result NSArray would be something like: e n g l i s h

I think is possible to do it with

[NSString componentSeparatedByCharacter:somecharacter], but I don't know what that character is...

I wrote something like this to extract the character:

NSString *character;
for (int i=0; i<[strWord length]; i++) {
    character = [strWord substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(i, 1)];
}

Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Do this:

NSMutableArray *characters = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:[myString length]];
for (int i=0; i < [myString length]; i++) {
    NSString *ichar  = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%c", [myString characterAtIndex:i]];
    [characters addObject:ichar];
}

You can also use this: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSString_Class/Reference/NSString.html#//apple_ref/occ/instm/NSString/getCharacters:range:

Take a look here for more options:

NSString to char[]

How to convert an NSString to char

Answer 2

If you need to enumerate them and support iOS 4.0 or later, you could use

[strWord enumerateSubstringsInRange:NSMakeRange(0, [strWord length])
                            options:NSStringEnumerationByComposedCharacterSequences
                         usingBlock:^(NSString *substring, NSRange substringRange, NSRange enclosingRange, BOOL *stop){
    // substring here contains each character in turn
}];

You could also just copy the characters into a buffer using -getCharacters:range: if you don't actually need them as an NSArray. Or you could just iterate over the string (using the block method, or by calling -characterAtIndex: repeatedly, or by copying out the entire buffer and iterating over that) and construct your own array.