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NSScanner

Authors

Richard Frith-Macdonald

Version: $Revision$

Date: $Date$

The NSScanner class documentation

NSScanner

Declared in: Foundation/NSScanner.h

Inherits from: NSObject

Conforms to: NSCopying


The NSScanner class cluster (currently a single class in GNUstep) provides a mechanism to parse the contents of a string into number and string values by making a sequence of scan operations to step through the string retrieving successive items.

You can tell the scanner whether its scanning is supposed to be case sensitive or not, and you can specify a set of characters to be skipped before each scanning operation (by default, whitespace and newlines).

Instance Variables

Methods


Class Methods

localizedScannerWithString:

+ (id) localizedScannerWithString: (NSString*)aString;
Returns an NSScanner instance set up to scan aString (using initWithString:) and with a locale set the default locale (using setLocale:).

scannerWithString:

+ (id) scannerWithString: (NSString*)aString;
Returns an NSScanner instance set up to scan aString (using initWithString:) and with no locale set.

Instances Methods

caseSensitive

- (BOOL) caseSensitive;
If the scanner is set to be case-sensitive in its scanning of the string (other than characters to be skipped), this method returns YES, otherwise it returns NO.
The default is for a scanner to not be case sensitive.

charactersToBeSkipped

- (NSCharacterSet*) charactersToBeSkipped;
Returns a set of characters containing those characters that the scanner ignores when starting any scan operation. Once a character not in this set has been encountered during an operation, skipping is finished, and any further characters from this set that are found are scanned normally.
The default for this is the whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet.

initWithString:

This is the designated initialiser
- (id) initWithString: (NSString*)aString;
Initialises the scanner to scan aString. The GNUstep implementation may make an internal copy of the original string - so it is not safe to assume that if you modify a mutable string that you initialised a scanner with, the changes will be visible to the scanner.
Returns the scanner object.

isAtEnd

- (BOOL) isAtEnd;
Returns YES if there are no characters left to be scanned in the string (or if all the characters that are left are in the set of characters to be skipped). Returns NO otherwise.

locale

- (NSDictionary*) locale;
Returns the locale set for the scanner, or nil if no locale has been set. A scanner uses it's locale to alter the way it handles scanning - it uses the NSDecimalSeparator value for scanning numbers.

scanCharactersFromSet:intoString:

- (BOOL) scanCharactersFromSet: (NSCharacterSet*)set intoString: (NSString**)stringValue;
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans any characters from set, terminating when a character not in the set is found. Returns YES if any character is scanned, NO otherwise. If stringValue is not null, any character scanned are stored in a string returned in this value.

scanDecimal:

- (BOOL) scanDecimal: (NSDecimal*)decimalValue;
Standards: MacOS-X NotOpenStep
Not implemented.

scanDouble:

- (BOOL) scanDouble: (double*)doubleValue;
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans a double value, placing it in doubleValue if that is not null. Returns YES if anything is scanned, NO otherwise.
On overflow, HUGE_VAL or -HUGE_VAL is put into doubleValue
On underflow, 0.0 is put into doubleValue
Scans past any excess digits

scanFloat:

- (BOOL) scanFloat: (float*)floatValue;
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans a float value, placing it in floatValue if that is not null. Returns YES if anything is scanned, NO otherwise.
On overflow, HUGE_VAL or -HUGE_VAL is put into floatValue
On underflow, 0.0 is put into floatValue
Scans past any excess digits

scanHexInt:

- (BOOL) scanHexInt: (unsigned int*)intValue;
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans a hexadecimal integer value (optionally prefixed by "0x" or "0X"), placing it in intValue if that is not null.
Returns YES if anything is scanned, NO otherwise.
On overflow, INT_MAX or INT_MIN is put into intValue
Scans past any excess digits

scanInt:

- (BOOL) scanInt: (int*)intValue;
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans a integer value, placing it in intValue if that is not null.
Returns YES if anything is scanned, NO otherwise.
On overflow, INT_MAX or INT_MIN is put into intValue
Scans past any excess digits

scanLocation

- (unsigned int) scanLocation;
Returns the current position that the scanner has reached in scanning the string. This is the position at which the next scan operation will begin.

scanLongLong:

- (BOOL) scanLongLong: (longlong*)longLongValue;
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans a long decimal integer value placing it in longLongValue if that is not null.
Returns YES if anything is scanned, NO otherwise.
On overflow, LONG_LONG_MAX or LONG_LONG_MIN is put into longLongValue
Scans past any excess digits

scanRadixUnsignedInt:

- (BOOL) scanRadixUnsignedInt: (unsigned int*)intValue;
Standards: GNUstep NotOpenStep NotMacOS-X
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans an unsigned integer value placing it in intValue if that is not null. If the number begins with "0x" or "0X" it is treated as hexadecimal, otherwise if the number begins with "0" it is treated as octal, otherwise the number is treated as decimal.
Returns YES if anything is scanned, NO otherwise.
On overflow, INT_MAX or INT_MIN is put into intValue
Scans past any excess digits

scanString:intoString:

- (BOOL) scanString: (NSString*)aString intoString: (NSString**)stringValue;
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans for aString and places the string ound in stringValue if that is not null.
Returns YES if anything is scanned, NO otherwise.

scanUpToCharactersFromSet:intoString:

- (BOOL) scanUpToCharactersFromSet: (NSCharacterSet*)set intoString: (NSString**)stringValue;
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans characters until it finds one in set. The scanned characters are placed in stringValue if that is not null.
Returns YES if anything is scanned, NO otherwise.

scanUpToString:intoString:

- (BOOL) scanUpToString: (NSString*)aString intoString: (NSString**)stringValue;
After initial skipping (if any), this method scans characters until it finds aString. The scanned characters are placed in stringValue if that is not null. If aString is not found, all the characters up to the end of the scanned string will be returned.
Returns YES if anything is scanned, NO otherwise.

setCaseSensitive:

- (void) setCaseSensitive: (BOOL)flag;
Sets the case sensitivity of the scanner.
Case sensitivity governs matrching of characters being scanned, but does not effect the characters in the set to be skipped.
The default is for a scanner to not be case sensitive.

setCharactersToBeSkipped:

- (void) setCharactersToBeSkipped: (NSCharacterSet*)skipSet;
Sets the set of characters that the scanner will skip over at the start of each scanning operation to be skipSet. Skipping is performed by literal character matchins - the case sensitivity of the scanner does not effect it. If this is set to nil, no skipping is done.
The default for this is the whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet.

setLocale:

- (void) setLocale: (NSDictionary*)aLocale;
This method sets the locale used by the scanner to aLocale. The locale may be set to nil.

setScanLocation:

- (void) setScanLocation: (unsigned int)index;
This method sets the location in the scanned string at which the next scan operation begins. Raises an NSRangeException if index is beyond the end of the scanned string.

string

- (NSString*) string;
Returns the string used by the scanner.