Replacing certain characters in a QString

Question

This question is kinda similar to mine. However, I am using C++ with Qt instead of C#.

How would I efficiently and easily remove all accents and special characters like !"§$%&/()=? etc. from a QString?

So "áche" should turn into "ache" or "über dir" to "ueber dir" (in german ü,ä,ö can be changed into the normalized character with an e appended) or at least "uber dir".

Note: Some people use a $ instead of s in some words so I want to make sure if a file is called "Ke$ha" that it will come out as "Kesha" or at least "KeSha".

The way I do it so far, incomplete, is like this:

void Utils::replaceInvalidChars(QString &str)
{
    if( str.size() == 0 )
        return;

    while( str.at(0) == '.' ) {
        str.remove(0,1);
    }

    str.replace( "/", "-" );
    str.replace( "|", "" );
    str.replace( ":", "-" );
    str.replace("\"", "" );
    str.replace( "?", "" );
    str.replace( "$", "s" );
    str.replace( "*", "" );
    str.replace( ",", "" );
    str.replace( "¿", "" );
    str.replace( "¡", "" );
    str.replace( "!", "" );
    str.replace( "'", "" );

    str.replace( "ë", "e" );
    str.replace( "ê", "e" );
    str.replace( "é", "e" );
    str.replace( "è", "e" );

    str.replace( "ç", "c" );

    str.replace( "ó", "o" );
    str.replace( "ö", "oe" );

    //U's...
    str.replace( "ü", "ue" );
    str.replace( "Ü", "U" );
    str.replace( "ù", "u" );
    str.replace( "Ù", "U" );
    str.replace( "û", "u" );
    str.replace( "Û", "u" );


    //ns
    str.replace( "ñ", "n" );

    //as
    str.replace( "ä", "ae" );
    str.replace( "Ä", "ae" );
    str.replace( "á", "a" );
    str.replace( "Á", "A" );
    str.replace( "à", "a" );
    str.replace( "À", "A" );

    str.replace( "ï", "i" );
}

So at first I remove all dots from the beginning. No matter how many there are. Then I replace certain characters with no character at all and some with a character like 's' or a depending on what it is.

My way is very long, tedious and chaotic. I am about to organize it a little with comments like "N's", "U's" etc. but still, if I make a mistake somewhere it will take way too long until I (eventually) find it.

Answer 1

I would start by separating the data from the logic:

std::vector<std::pair<QString, QString>> replacements { 
    { "/", "-" },
    { "|", ""  },
    // ...
    { "ï", "i" }
};

for ( auto const &r : replacements) { 
    str.replace(r.first, r.second);
}

I'm not sure the comments about the groups of letters being replaced really add a lot though.

Then I'd at least consider moving the data out of the program itself, and into a data file the program uses, so the replacements you do can be adjusted without re-compiling the code (this is the sort of thing that frequently seems to need a fair amount of "tweaking", since there's no one way of doing it that's obviously correct and the other ways are wrong).

Answer 2

I would eliminate lines and clean up the code by relying on regular expressions.

QString s = "áche über dir Ke$ha is worth $100";

// Performance: Eliminate characters you do not wish to have. 
s.remove(QRegularExpression("[" + QRegularExpression::escape("'!*,?|¡¿") + "]"));
qDebug().noquote() << "Before:\t" << s;

// Performance: Check for characters
if (s.contains(QRegularExpression("[" + QRegularExpression::escape("$/:ÀÁÄÙÛÜàáäçèéêëïñóöùûü") + "]")))
{
    // Special Characters 
    // Escape function is a safety measure in case you accidentally insert "^" in the square brackets.
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[" + QRegularExpression::escape(":/") + "]"), "-");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[$]"), "s");

    // Upper Case
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[ÁÀ]"),   "A");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[Ä]"),    "Ae");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[ÜÛÙ]"),  "U");

    // Lower Case
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[áà]"),   "a");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[ä]"),    "ae");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[ç]"),    "c");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[ëêéè]"), "e");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[ï]"),    "i");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[ñ]"),    "n");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[óö]"),   "o");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[ûù]"),   "u");
    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[ü]"),    "ue");
}

qDebug().noquote() << " After:\t" << s;

---

Before:  áche über dir Ke$ha is worth $100
 After:  ache ueber dir Kesha is worth s100

Oops; found an error in your code. Lets just adjust this line then:

    s.replace(QRegularExpression("[$]([^0-9])"), "s\\1");

---

Before:  áche über dir Ke$ha is worth $100
 After:  ache ueber dir Kesha is worth $100