Remove all but numbers from NSString

Question

Old question, but how about:

  NSString *newString = [[origString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:
                [[NSCharacterSet decimalDigitCharacterSet] invertedSet]] 
                componentsJoinedByString:@""];

It explodes the source string on the set of non-digits, then reassembles them using an empty string separator. Not as efficient as picking through characters, but much more compact in code.

There's no need to use a regular expressions library as the other answers suggest -- the class you're after is called NSScanner. It's used as follows:

NSString *originalString = @"(123) 123123 abc";
NSMutableString *strippedString = [NSMutableString 
        stringWithCapacity:originalString.length];

NSScanner *scanner = [NSScanner scannerWithString:originalString];
NSCharacterSet *numbers = [NSCharacterSet 
        characterSetWithCharactersInString:@"0123456789"];

while ([scanner isAtEnd] == NO) {
  NSString *buffer;
  if ([scanner scanCharactersFromSet:numbers intoString:&buffer]) {
    [strippedString appendString:buffer];

  } else {
    [scanner setScanLocation:([scanner scanLocation] + 1)];
  }
}

NSLog(@"%@", strippedString); // "123123123"

EDIT: I've updated the code because the original was written off the top of my head and I figured it would be enough to point the people in the right direction. It seems that people are after code they can just copy-paste straight into their application.

I also agree that Michael Pelz-Sherman's solution is more appropriate than using NSScanner, so you might want to take a look at that.

The accepted answer is overkill for what is being asked. This is much simpler:

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

This is great, but the code does not work for me on the iPhone 3.0 SDK.

If I define strippedString as you show here, I get a BAD ACCESS error when trying to print it after the scanCharactersFromSet:intoString call.

If I do it like so:

NSMutableString *strippedString = [NSMutableString stringWithCapacity:10];

I end up with an empty string, but the code doesn't crash.

I had to resort to good old C instead:

for (int i=0; i<[phoneNumber length]; i++) {
    if (isdigit([phoneNumber characterAtIndex:i])) {
        [strippedString appendFormat:@"%c",[phoneNumber characterAtIndex:i]];
    }
}

Though this is an old question with working answers, I missed international format support. Based on the solution of simonobo, the altered character set includes a plus sign "+". International phone numbers are supported by this amendment as well.

NSString *condensedPhoneNumber = [[phoneNumber componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:
              [[NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@"+0123456789"]
              invertedSet]] 
              componentsJoinedByString:@""];

The Swift expressions are

var phoneNumber = " +1 (234) 567-1000 "
var allowedCharactersSet = NSMutableCharacterSet.decimalDigitCharacterSet()
allowedCharactersSet.addCharactersInString("+")
var condensedPhoneNumber = phoneNumber.componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(allowedCharactersSet.invertedSet).joinWithSeparator("")

Which yields +12345671000 as a common international phone number format.

Here is the Swift version of this.

import UIKit
import Foundation
var phoneNumber = " 1 (888) 555-5551    "
var strippedPhoneNumber = "".join(phoneNumber.componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet(NSCharacterSet.decimalDigitCharacterSet().invertedSet))