How to Split String Using Regex Expressions

Swift doesn't have native regular expressions as of yet. But Foundation provides NSRegularExpression.

import Foundation

let toSearch = "323 ECO Economics Course 451 ENG English Course 789 MAT Mathematical Topography"

let pattern = "[0-9]{3} [A-Z]{3}"
let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: pattern, options: [])

// NSRegularExpression works with objective-c NSString, which are utf16 encoded
let matches = regex.matches(in: toSearch, range: NSMakeRange(0, toSearch.utf16.count))

// the combination of zip, dropFirst and map to optional here is a trick
// to be able to map on [(result1, result2), (result2, result3), (result3, nil)]
let results = zip(matches, matches.dropFirst().map { Optional.some($0) } + [nil]).map { current, next -> String in
  let range = current.rangeAt(0)
  let start = String.UTF16Index(range.location)
  // if there's a next, use it's starting location as the ending of our match
  // otherwise, go to the end of the searched string
  let end = next.map { $0.rangeAt(0) }.map { String.UTF16Index($0.location) } ?? String.UTF16Index(toSearch.utf16.count)

  return String(toSearch.utf16[start..<end])!
}

dump(results)

Running this will output

▿ 3 elements
  - "323 ECO Economics Course "
  - "451 ENG English Course "
  - "789 MAT Mathematical Topography"

You can use regex "\\b[0-9]{1,}[a-zA-Z ]{1,}" and this extension from this answer to get all ranges of a string using literal, caseInsensitive or regularExpression search:

extension StringProtocol {
    func ranges<S: StringProtocol>(of string: S, options: String.CompareOptions = []) -> [Range<Index>] {
        var result: [Range<Index>] = []
        var startIndex = self.startIndex
        while startIndex < endIndex,
            let range = self[startIndex...].range(of: string, options: options) {
                result.append(range)
                startIndex = range.lowerBound < range.upperBound ? range.upperBound :
                    index(range.lowerBound, offsetBy: 1, limitedBy: endIndex) ?? endIndex
        }
        return result
    }
}

---

let inputString = "323 ECO Economics Course 451 ENG English Course 789 Mathematical Topography"

let courses = inputString.ranges(of: "\\b[0-9]{1,}[a-zA-Z ]{1,}", options: .regularExpression).map { inputString[$0].trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespaces) }

print(courses)   //   ["323 ECO Economics Course", "451 ENG English Course", "789 Mathematical Topography"]