ios - Swift replace substring regex

Question

I am attempting to use regular expression to replace all occurrences of UK car registrations within a string.

The following swift code works perfectly for a when the string matches the regex exactly as below.

var myString = "DD11 AAA"
var stringlength = countElements(myString) 
var ierror: NSError?
var regex:NSRegularExpression = NSRegularExpression(pattern: "^([A-HK-PRSVWY][A-HJ-PR-Y])\s?([0][2-9]|[1-9][0-9])\s?[A-HJ-PR-Z]{3}$", options: NSRegularExpressionOptions.CaseInsensitive, error: &ierror)!
var modString = regex.stringByReplacingMatchesInString(myString, options: nil, range: NSMakeRange(0, stringlength), withTemplate: "XX")
print(modString)

The result is XX

However, the following does not work and the string is not modifed

var myString = "my car reg 1 - DD11 AAA  my car reg 2 - AA22 BBB"
var stringlength = countElements(myString) 
var ierror: NSError?
var regex:NSRegularExpression = NSRegularExpression(pattern: "^([A-HK-PRSVWY][A-HJ-PR-Y])\s?([0][2-9]|[1-9][0-9])\s?[A-HJ-PR-Z]{3}$", options: NSRegularExpressionOptions.CaseInsensitive, error: &ierror)!
var modString = regex.stringByReplacingMatchesInString(myString, options: nil, range: NSMakeRange(0, stringlength), withTemplate: "XX")
print(modString)

The result is my car reg 1 - DD11 AAA my car reg 2 - AA22 BBB

Can anyone give me any pointers?

Answer 1

You need to remove the ^ and $ anchors.

The ^ means start of string and $ means end of string (or line, depending on the options). That's why your first example works: in the first test string, the start of the string is really followed by your pattern and ends with it.

In the second test string, the pattern is found in the middle of the string, thus the ^... can't apply. If you would just remove the ^, the $ would apply on the second occurrence of the registration number and the output would be my car reg 1 - DD11 AAA my car reg 2 - XX.

let myString = "my car reg 1 - DD11 AAA  my car reg 2 - AA22 BBB"
let regex = try! NSRegularExpression(pattern: "([A-HK-PRSVWY][A-HJ-PR-Y])\s?([0][2-9]|[1-9][0-9])\s?[A-HJ-PR-Z]{3}", options: NSRegularExpression.Options.caseInsensitive)
let range = NSMakeRange(0, myString.count)
let modString = regex.stringByReplacingMatches(in: myString, options: [], range: range, withTemplate: "XX")
print(modString)
// Output: "my car reg 1 - XX  my car reg 2 - XX"