Basic Operators

Assignment Operator

let b = 10 // constant
var a = 5	  // variable
a = b

let is not the same as that in ES6. It is more or like final in Java. It means the variable (value or reference) cannot be changed once initialization.

But let in Swift has stronger semantics, which enable immutability or constant. It means not only the reference cannot be mutable but also the object it refers cannot be mutable.

// swift
let arr = [1, 2, 3]
arr[0] = 3 // error

// java
final int[] arr = [1, 2, 3]
arr[0] = 3 // ok

multiple assignment with tuple:

let (x, y) = (1, 2)

== vs. ===, != vs. !==

== is the equal operator, while === is identity operator which is used to test wthether two object references both refer to the same object instance.

tuples are compared from left to right.

(1, "zebra") < (2, "apple)

(3, "apple") < (3, "bird")

Nil-Colaescing Operator

var a : String? = "aaaa"
var b = a ?? b

a ?? b is shorthand for a != nil ? a! : b

Range Operators

• closed range operator: a...b
• half-open range operator: a..<b

Strings and Characters

Every string is composed of encoding-indepent Unicode characters.

String type is a value type. When you pass a String to a function or assign to a constant/variable, its value is copied.

Actually, it seems to have the similar attribute of immutability as that in Java.

Character

Character can be created from a single-character string literal.

let ch : Character = "1"

String Interpolation

String interpolation in Swift is different from that in Javascript.

let a = 3
let message = "the number is: \(a), its double is: \(Double(a) * 2)"

In ES6:

let a = 3
let message = `the number is: ${a}, its double is: ${a*2}`

Unicode

Unicode code point is a number for every character in Unicode. Unicode scalar is any Unicode code point in the range U+0000 ~ U+D7FF or U+E000 ~ U+10FFFF. The range in U+D800 ~ U+DFFF is for surrogate pair code points.

• escaped special charaters: \0, \\, \t, \n, \r, \", \' ..
• Unicode scalar: \u{00FF} …

The unicode literal is different from that in Java and Javascript. In Java/Javascript, it is like \u00FF without brackets.

Swift Character is not only single Unicode character, it can combine one or more Unicode scalars. Actually, every instance of Swift’s Character represents a single extended grapheme cluster.

let eAcute: Character = "\u{E9}"          
let combinedEacute: Character = "\u{65}\u{301}" // e followed by  ́
// both are rednered as é

Using extended grapheme clusters makes Swift’s Character is so much different from characters in other programming languages.

Accessing and Mofifying a String

Due to the representation of Swift Character, the access and modification ways are special accordingly.

Each String value has an associated index type, String.Index.

String has startIndex and endIndex properties, which is the half-open range with endIndex exclusive.

let greeting = "Hello world!"
greeting[greeting.startIndex]
// H
var index = greeting.index(before: greeting.endIndex)
greeting[index]
// !
index = greeting.index(after: greeting.startIndex)
greeting[index]
// u
index = greeting.index(greeting.startIndex, offsetBy: 2)
greeting[index]
// l

Control Flow

switch

No need to use explict break in each case branch.

But if you want the behaviours when missing break in Java, you can use the fallthrough keyword.

• Interval Matching

let number = 62
let desc : String
switch number {
	case 0:
		desc = "no"
	case 1..<5:
		desc = "a few"
	case 5..<12:
		desc = "several"
	default:
		desc = "many"
}

• compound cases

let someCharacter: Character = "e"
switch someCharacter {
	case "a", "e", "i", "o", "u":
	    print("\(someCharacter) is a vowel")
	case "b", "c", "d", "f", "g", "h", "j", "k", "l", "m",
	     "n", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z":
	    print("\(someCharacter) is a consonant")
	default:
	    print("\(someCharacter) is not a vowel or a consonant")
}

• test multiple values with tuple

let somePoint = (1, 1)
switch somePoint {
	case (0, 0):
	    print("(0, 0) is at the origin")
	case (_, 0):
	    print("(\(somePoint.0), 0) is on the x-axis")
	case (0, _):
	    print("(0, \(somePoint.1)) is on the y-axis")
	case (-2...2, -2...2):
	    print("(\(somePoint.0), \(somePoint.1)) is inside the box")
	default:
	    print("(\(somePoint.0), \(somePoint.1)) is outside of the box")
}

• value binding

let anotherPoint = (2, 0)
switch anotherPoint {
	case (let x, 0):
	    print("on the x-axis with an x value of \(x)")
	case (0, let y):
	    print("on the y-axis with a y value of \(y)")
	case let (x, y):
	    print("somewhere else at (\(x), \(y))")
}

• where

let yetAnotherPoint = (1, -1)
switch yetAnotherPoint {
	case let (x, y) where x == y:
	    print("(\(x), \(y)) is on the line x == y")
	case let (x, y) where x == -y:
	    print("(\(x), \(y)) is on the line x == -y")
	case let (x, y):
	    print("(\(x), \(y)) is just some arbitrary point")
}