How to Split String Using Regex Expressions

I have a string "323 ECO Economics Course 451 ENG English Course 789 Mathematical Topography" I want to split this string using the regex expression [0-9][0-9][0-9][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z] so that the function returns the array:

Array = 
["323 ECO Economics Course ", "451 ENG English Course",  "789 Mathematical Topography"]

How would I go about doing this using swift?

Edit My question is different than the one linked to. I realize that you can split a string in swift using myString.components(separatedBy: "splitting string") The issue is that that question doesn't address how to make the splitting string a regex expression. I tried using mystring.components(separatedBy: "[0-9][0-9][0-9][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z]", options: .regularExpression) but that didn't work.

How can I make the separatedBy: portion a regular expression?

Solution

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"