---
title: "folding(options:locale:)"
framework: foundation
role: symbol
role_heading: Instance Method
path: "foundation/nsstring/folding(options:locale:)"
---

# folding(options:locale:)

Creates a string suitable for comparison by removing the specified character distinctions from a string.

## Declaration

```swift
func folding(options: NSString.CompareOptions = [], locale: Locale?) -> String
```

## Parameters

- `options`: Any combination of the doc://com.apple.foundation/documentation/Foundation/NSString/CompareOptions/caseInsensitive, doc://com.apple.foundation/documentation/Foundation/NSString/CompareOptions/widthInsensitive, and doc://com.apple.foundation/documentation/Foundation/NSString/CompareOptions/diacriticInsensitive comparison options.
- `locale`: The locale to use for the folding operation. Pass nil to use the system locale.

## Return Value

Return Value A string created by performing a character folding operation with the specified options and locale.

## Discussion

Discussion When working with text—especially text in Latin script—it’s often useful to compare strings in such a way that ignores differences in case (uppercase or lowercase), width (full-width or half-width), and/or diacritics (accents and other marks). To accomplish this, you may use one of the methods described in Identifying and Comparing Strings, passing one or more options specified by the NSString.CompareOptions type as appropriate. If you’re performing many such comparisons, you may instead, as an optimization, perform a single folding operation on the string and store the result, passing that into a more efficient comparison method. For example, if you were determining the case-insensitive (that is, “HELLO”, “hello”, and “Hello” are all considered equal) intersection of two sets of strings, instead of calling the localizedCaseInsensitiveCompare(_:) method for each pair of strings, you might first normalize both sets of strings by calling the folding(options:locale:) method, passing the caseInsensitive option and the current locale, and then compare each pair of folded strings using the isEqual(to:) method. tip: Character folding operations using the folding(options:locale:) method are often more performant than the equivalent string transform using the applyingTransform(_:reverse:) method. Rules for how characters are folded may vary, depending on the locale. For example, when folding a string containing the character “I” (U+0049 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I) and specifying the caseInsensitive comparison option, an English-speaking locale returns “i” (U+0069 LATIN SMALL LETTER I), and a Turkish-speaking locale returns “ı” (U+0131 LATIN SMALL DOTLESS I). note: The result of character folding operations may not be suitable for display to users, and should be used only for internal processing.