Detecting if an NSString contains...?

Question

Here's how I would do it:

NSString *someString = @"Here is my string";
NSRange isRange = [someString rangeOfString:@"is " options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch];
if(isRange.location == 0) {
   //found it...
} else {
   NSRange isSpacedRange = [someString rangeOfString:@" is " options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch];
   if(isSpacedRange.location != NSNotFound) {
      //found it...
   }
}

You can easily add this as a category onto NSString:

@interface NSString (JRStringAdditions) 

- (BOOL)containsString:(NSString *)string;
- (BOOL)containsString:(NSString *)string
               options:(NSStringCompareOptions)options;

@end

@implementation NSString (JRStringAdditions) 

- (BOOL)containsString:(NSString *)string
               options:(NSStringCompareOptions)options {
   NSRange rng = [self rangeOfString:string options:options];
   return rng.location != NSNotFound;
}

- (BOOL)containsString:(NSString *)string {
   return [self containsString:string options:0];
}

@end

Use the following code to scan the word in sentence.

NSString *sentence = @"The quick brown fox";
NSString *word = @"quack";
if ([sentence rangeOfString:word].location != NSNotFound) {
    NSLog(@"Yes it does contain that word");
}

In iOS8 you can now use:

BOOL containsString = [@"Here is my string." containsString:@"is"];

There's an interesting post on how to "retrofit" it to iOS7 here: http://petersteinberger.com/blog/2014/retrofitting-containsstring-on-ios-7/

I recommend using NSLinguisticTagger. We can use it to search Here is my string. His isn't a mississippi isthmus. It is?

NSLinguisticTagger *linguisticTagger = [[NSLinguisticTagger alloc] initWithTagSchemes:@[
                                        NSLinguisticTagSchemeTokenType,
                                        ]
                                                                              options:
                                        NSLinguisticTaggerOmitPunctuation |
                                        NSLinguisticTaggerOmitWhitespace |
                                        NSLinguisticTaggerOmitOther ];
[linguisticTagger setString:@"Here is my string. His isn't a mississippi isthmus. It is?"];
[linguisticTagger enumerateTagsInRange:NSMakeRange(0,
                                                   [[linguisticTagger string] length])
                                scheme:NSLinguisticTagSchemeTokenType
                               options:
 NSLinguisticTaggerOmitPunctuation |
 NSLinguisticTaggerOmitWhitespace |
 NSLinguisticTaggerOmitOther |
 NSLinguisticTaggerJoinNames
                            usingBlock:^(NSString *tag, NSRange tokenRange, NSRange sentenceRange, BOOL *stop) {
                                NSLog(@"tag: %@, tokenRange: %@, sentenceRange: %@, token: %@",
                                      tag,
                                      NSStringFromRange(tokenRange),
                                      NSStringFromRange(sentenceRange),
                                      [[linguisticTagger string] substringWithRange:tokenRange]);
                            }];

This outputs:

tag: Word, tokenRange: {0, 4}, sentenceRange: {0, 19}, token: Here
tag: Word, tokenRange: {5, 2}, sentenceRange: {0, 19}, token: is
tag: Word, tokenRange: {8, 2}, sentenceRange: {0, 19}, token: my
tag: Word, tokenRange: {11, 6}, sentenceRange: {0, 19}, token: string
tag: Word, tokenRange: {19, 3}, sentenceRange: {19, 33}, token: His
tag: Word, tokenRange: {23, 2}, sentenceRange: {19, 33}, token: is
tag: Word, tokenRange: {25, 3}, sentenceRange: {19, 33}, token: n't
tag: Word, tokenRange: {29, 1}, sentenceRange: {19, 33}, token: a
tag: Word, tokenRange: {31, 11}, sentenceRange: {19, 33}, token: mississippi
tag: Word, tokenRange: {43, 7}, sentenceRange: {19, 33}, token: isthmus
tag: Word, tokenRange: {52, 2}, sentenceRange: {52, 6}, token: It
tag: Word, tokenRange: {55, 2}, sentenceRange: {52, 6}, token: is

It ignores His mississippi and isthmus and even identifies is inside of isn't.