Advanced Pattern Matching

Type Matches

released Fri, 15 Feb 2019
Swift Version 5.0

Type Matches

Given Swift's strong type system, there's usually no need for runtime type checks like it more often happens in Objective-C. However, when you interact with legacy Objective-C code (which hasn't been updated to reflect simple generics yet), then you often end up with code that needs to check for types. Imagine getting an array of NSStrings and NSNumbers:

let u = NSArray(array: [NSString(string: \"String1\"), NSNumber(int: 20), NSNumber(int: 40)])

When you go through this NSArray, you never know what kind of type you get. However, switch statements allow you to easily test for types here:

for item in array {

     switch item {

     case is NSString:

         print(\"string\")

     case is NSNumber:

         print(\"number\")

     default:

         print(\"Unknown type \(item)\")

     }

}