How would I decompose an NSString into individual characters?

Question

So I have a method that takes an NSString as an argument, and I would like that method to basically decompose that sting into individual characters and store them in an array(NSArray).

I other words I would like to read each character in the string and store the individual characters in an array and in the same order, so that I can process the individual characters at a later time.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Iterate through the string, use characterAt - and append each character to an NSMutableArray.

But if your doing that - why bother putting them in the NSArray at all?

NSMutableArray *myArray = [[NSMutableArray] alloc] initWithCapacity:[string length]];

for (i=0;i<[string length];i++) {
  unichaar ch;
  ch = [string  characterAtIndex:i];
  NSLog(@"Processing charachter %c",ch);

   // If you really want
  [myArray addObject:(id) ch];
}

Answer 2

Besides Brad answer (where he shows you can certainly store each character in a NSArray instance if you want), you also have the more straightforward opportunity to get the NSString value as a plain old C null terminated string. So you can iterate it like this:

char c;
int i = 0;
const char *buffer = [nsstringInstance cStringUsingEncoding:NSASCIIStringEncoding];
while (c = buffer[i++]) {
    // iterating using c char

}