Remove all whitespaces from NSString

Question

stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet only removes characters from the beginning and the end of the string, not the ones in the middle.

1) If you need to remove only a given character (say the space character) from your string, use:

[yourString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""]

2) If you really need to remove a set of characters (namely not only the space character, but any whitespace character like space, tab, unbreakable space, etc), you could split your string using the whitespaceCharacterSet then joining the words again in one string:

NSArray* words = [yourString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet :[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]];
NSString* nospacestring = [words componentsJoinedByString:@""];

Note that this last solution has the advantage of handling every whitespace character and not only spaces, but is a bit less efficient that the stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:withString:. So if you really only need to remove the space character and are sure you won't have any other whitespace character than the plain space char, use the first method.

I prefer using regex like this:

NSString *myString = @"this is a test";
NSString *myNewString = [myString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"\\s"
                                     withString:@""
                                        options:NSRegularExpressionSearch
                                          range:NSMakeRange(0, [myStringlength])];
 //myNewString will be @"thisisatest"

---

You can make yourself a category on NSString to make life even easier:

- (NSString *) removeAllWhitespace
{
    return [self stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"\\s" withString:@""
                                              options:NSRegularExpressionSearch
                                                range:NSMakeRange(0, [self length])];

}

Here is a unit test method on it too:

- (void) testRemoveAllWhitespace
{
    NSString *testResult = nil;

    NSArray *testStringsArray        = @[@""
                                         ,@"    "
                                         ,@"  basicTest    "
                                         ,@"  another Test \n"
                                         ,@"a b c d e f g"
                                         ,@"\n\tA\t\t \t \nB    \f  C \t  ,d,\ve   F\r\r\r"
                                         ,@"  landscape, portrait,     ,,,up_side-down   ;asdf;  lkjfasdf0qi4jr0213 ua;;;;af!@@##$$ %^^ & *  * ()+  +   "
                                         ];

    NSArray *expectedResultsArray   = @[@""
                                        ,@""
                                        ,@"basicTest"
                                        ,@"anotherTest"
                                        ,@"abcdefg"
                                        ,@"ABC,d,eF"
                                        ,@"landscape,portrait,,,,up_side-down;asdf;lkjfasdf0qi4jr0213ua;;;;af!@@##$$%^^&**()++"
                                        ];

    for (int i=0; i < [testStringsArray count]; i++)
    {
        testResult = [testStringsArray[i] removeAllWhitespace];
        STAssertTrue([testResult isEqualToString:expectedResultsArray[i]], @"Expected: \"%@\" to become: \"%@\", but result was \"%@\"",
                     testStringsArray[i], expectedResultsArray[i], testResult);
    }
}

Easy task using stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString

NSString *search = [searchbar.text stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@" " withString:@""];

This may help you if you are experiencing \u00a0 in stead of (whitespace). I had this problem when I was trying to extract Device Contact Phone Numbers. I needed to modify the phoneNumber string so it has no whitespace in it.

NSString* yourString = [yourString stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"\u00a0" withString:@""];

When yourString was the current phone number.