iOS 7 contact number spaces are not spaces [duplicate]

Question

In my app I am trying to retrieve the list of contact's number and try to do operations on them. I realized that whenever I have added new contacts (after updating to iOS 7) the new contacts formatting has changed, as there are spacings in the newly added numbers.

Using the ordinary replace methods does not remove the spaces.

Are these really spaces or what are these ? my objective is to get back the 'space' free number.

for example, if the number is 1 818 323 323 323, I want to get 1818323323323

Answer 1

I looked at this as not getting rid of 'spaces' but being left with only decimal characters. This code did that for me:

phoneNumberString = [[phoneNumberString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[[NSCharacterSet decimalDigitCharacterSet] invertedSet]] componentsJoinedByString:@""];

This takes out everything that's not a number 0-9.

Swift 4.1:

phoneNumberString = phoneNumberString.components(separatedBy: CharacterSet.decimalDigits.inverted).joined(separator: "")

Answer 2

Another (very flexible) option is to use a regular expression. This allows you to retain the + or any other characters you want to remain.

let numberFromAddressBook = "+1 818 323 323 323"

let cleanNumber = numberFromAddressBook.stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString("[^0-9+]", withString: "", options: NSStringCompareOptions.RegularExpressionSearch, range:nil)

"+1818323323323"