Evaluate/compare NSString with wildcards?

Question

Hi I'm trying to evaluate an NSString to see if it fits a certain criteria, which contains wildcards in the form of one or more asterix characters.

Example:

NSString *filePath = @"file://Users/test/Desktop/file.txt";
NSString *matchCriteria = @"file://*/file.*";

I would like to see if filePath matches (fits?) matchCriteria, in this example it does. Does anybody know how I can go about doing this?

Many thanks!

Answer 1

In addition to NSRegularExpression, you can also use NSPredicate.

NSString *filePath = @"file://Users/test/Desktop/file.txt";
NSString *matchCriteria = @"file://*/file.*";

NSPredicate *pred = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"self LIKE %@", matchCriteria];

BOOL filePathMatches = [pred evaluateWithObject:filePath];

The Predicate Programming Guide is a comprehensive document desribing how predicates work. They can be particularly useful if you have an array of items that you want to filter based on some criteria.

Answer 2

NSString implements these methods:

@interface NSObject (NSComparisonMethods)
- (BOOL)isLike:(NSString *)object;
- (BOOL)isCaseInsensitiveLike:(NSString *)object;
@end

They are much faster than NSPredicate and NSRegularExpression.