[ios] Convert Swift string to array

How can I convert a String "Hello" to an Array ["H","e","l","l","o"] in Swift?

In Objective-C I have used 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];
}

This question is related to ios arrays swift string

The answer is


Suppose you have four text fields "otpOneTxt","otpTwoTxt","otpThreeTxt","otpFourTxt" and a string "getOtp"

            let getup = "5642"
            let array = self.getOtp.map({ String($0) })
            
            otpOneTxt.text = array[0] //5
           
            otpTwoTxt.text = array[1] //6
           
            otpThreeTxt.text = array[2] //4
            
            otpFourTxt.text = array[3] //2

    let string = "hell0"
    let ar = Array(string.characters)
    print(ar)

Updated for Swift 4

Here are 3 ways.

//array of Characters
let charArr1 = [Character](myString)

//array of String.element
let charArr2 = Array(myString)

for char in myString {
  //char is of type Character
}

In some cases, what people really want is a way to convert a string into an array of little strings with 1 character length each. Here is a super efficient way to do that:

//array of String
var strArr = myString.map { String($0)}

Swift 3

Here are 3 ways.

let charArr1 = [Character](myString.characters)
let charArr2 = Array(myString.characters)
for char in myString.characters {
  //char is of type Character
}

In some cases, what people really want is a way to convert a string into an array of little strings with 1 character length each. Here is a super efficient way to do that:

var strArr = myString.characters.map { String($0)}

Or you can add an extension to String.

extension String {
   func letterize() -> [Character] {
     return Array(self.characters)
  }
}

Then you can call it like this:

let charArr = "Cat".letterize()

Edit (Swift 4)

In Swift 4, you don't have to use characters to use map(). Just do map() on String.

let letters = "ABC".map { String($0) }
print(letters) // ["A", "B", "C"]
print(type(of: letters)) // Array<String>

Or if you'd prefer shorter: "ABC".map(String.init) (2-bytes )

Edit (Swift 2 & Swift 3)

In Swift 2 and Swift 3, You can use map() function to characters property.

let letters = "ABC".characters.map { String($0) }
print(letters) // ["A", "B", "C"]

Original (Swift 1.x)

Accepted answer doesn't seem to be the best, because sequence-converted String is not a String sequence, but Character:

$ swift
Welcome to Swift!  Type :help for assistance.
  1> Array("ABC")
$R0: [Character] = 3 values {
  [0] = "A"
  [1] = "B"
  [2] = "C"
}

This below works for me:

let str = "ABC"
let arr = map(str) { s -> String in String(s) }

Reference for a global function map() is here: http://swifter.natecook.com/func/map/


For Swift version 5.3 its easy as:

let string = "Hello world"
let characters = Array(string)

print(characters)

// ["H", "e", "l", "l", "o", " ", "w", "o", "r", "l", "d"]


There is also this useful function on String: components(separatedBy: String)

let string = "1;2;3"
let array = string.components(separatedBy: ";")
print(array) // returns ["1", "2", "3"]

Works well to deal with strings separated by a character like ";" or even "\n"


Martin R answer is the best approach, and as he said, because String conforms the SquenceType protocol, you can also enumerate a string, getting each character on each iteration.

let characters = "Hello"
var charactersArray: [Character] = []

for (index, character) in enumerate(characters) {
    //do something with the character at index
    charactersArray.append(character)
}

println(charactersArray)

An easy way to do this is to map the variable and return each Character as a String:

let someText = "hello"

let array = someText.map({ String($0) }) // [String]

The output should be ["h", "e", "l", "l", "o"].


In Swift 4, as String is a collection of Character, you need to use map

let array1 = Array("hello") // Array<Character>
let array2 = Array("hello").map({ "\($0)" }) // Array<String>
let array3 = "hello".map(String.init) // Array<String>

You can also create an extension:

var strArray = "Hello, playground".Letterize()

extension String {
    func Letterize() -> [String] {
        return map(self) { String($0) }
    }
}

func letterize() -> [Character] {
    return Array(self.characters)
}

for the function on String: components(separatedBy: String)

in Swift 5.1

have change to:

string.split(separator: "/")


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