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In Swift 3, I have written a custom operator prefix operator § which I use in a method taking a String as value returning a LocalizedString struct (holding key and value).
public prefix func §(key: String) -> LocalizedString {
return LocalizedString(key: key)
}
public struct LocalizedString {
public var key: String
public var value: String
public init(key: String) {
let translated = translate(using: key) // assume we have this
self.key = key
self.value = translated ?? "!!\(key)!!"
}
}
(Yes I know about the awesome L10n enum in SwiftGen, but we are downloading our strings from our backend, and this question is more about how to work with custom operators)
But what if we wanna get the translated value from the result of the § operator (i.e. the property value from the resulting LocalizedString)
let translation = §"MyKey".value // Compile error "Value of type 'String' has no member 'value'"
We can of course easily fix this compile error by wraping it in parenthesis (§"MyKey").value. But if do not want to do that. Is it possible to set precedence for custom operators in relationship to the 'dot' literal?
Yes I know that only infix operators may declare precedence, but it would make sense to somehow work with precedence in order to achieve what I want:
precedencegroup Localization { higherThan: DotPrecedence } // There is no such group as "Dot"
prefix operator §: Localization
To mark that the Swift compiler first should evaluate §"MyKey" and understand that is not a string, but in fact an LocalizedString (struct).
Feels unlikely that this would be impossible? What am I missing?
The . is not an operator like all the other ones defined in the standard library, it is provided by the compiler instead. The grammar for it are Explicit Member Expressions.
Having a higher precedence than the . is nothing the compiler should enable you to do, as it's such a fundamental use case. Imagine what you could do if the compiler enabled such a thing:
-"Test".characters.count
If you could have a higher precedence than ., the compiler has to check all possibilities:
(-"Test").characters.count // func -(s: String) -> String
(-("Test".characters)).count // func -(s: String.CharacterView) -> String.CharacterView
-("Test".characters.count) // func -(s: Int) -> Int
Which would
Potentially increase the compile time a lot
Be ambiguous
Possibly change behaviour of existing code upon adding overloads
What I suggest you to do is abandon the idea with a new operator, it's only going to be adding more cognitive load by squashing some specific behaviour into a single obscure character. This is how I'd do it:
extension String {
var translatedString : String {
return translate(using: self)
}
}
"MyKey".localizedString
Or if you want to use your LocalizedString:
extension String {
var localized : LocalizedString {
return LocalizedString(key: self)
}
}
"MyKey".localized.value
These versions are much more comprehensive.
This question is specifically about converting an Array of type Character to a String. Converting an Array of Strings or numbers to a string is not the topic of discussion here.
In the following 2 lines, I would expect myStringFromArray to be set to "C,a,t!,🐱"
var myChars: [Character] = ["C", "a", "t", "!", "🐱"]
let myStringFromArray = myChars.joinWithSeparator(",");
However, I can't execute that code because the compiler complains about an "ambiguous reference to member joinWithSeparator".
So, two questions:
1) Apple says,
"Every instance of Swift’s Character type represents a single extended
grapheme cluster. An extended grapheme cluster is a sequence of one or
more Unicode scalars that (when combined) produce a single
human-readable character."
Which to me sounds at least homogeneous enough to think it would be reasonable to implement the joinWithSeparator method to support the Character type. So, does anyone have a good answer as to why they don't do that???
2) What's the best way to transform an Array of type Character to a String in Swift?
Note: if you don't want a separator between the characters, the solution would be:
let myStringFromArray = String(myChars)
and that would give you "Cat!🐱"
Which to me sounds at least homogeneous enough to think it would be reasonable to implement the joinWithSeparator method to support the Character type. So, does anyone have a good answer as to why they don't do that???
This may be an oversight in the design. This error occurs because there are two possible candidates for joinWithSeparator(_:). I suspect this ambiguity exists because of the way Swift can implicit interpret double quotes as either String or Character. In this context, it's ambiguous as to which to choose.
The first candidate is joinWithSeparator(_: String) -> String. It does what you're looking for.
If the separator is treated as a String, this candidate is picked, and the result would be: "C,a,t,!,🐱"
The second is joinWithSeparator<Separator : SequenceType where Separator.Generator.Element == Generator.Element.Generator.Element>(_: Separator) -> JoinSequence<Self>. It's called on a Sequence of Sequences, and given a Sequence as a seperator. The method signature is a bit of a mouthful, so lets break it down. The argument to this function is of Separator type. This Separator is constrained to be a SequenceType where the elements of the sequence (Seperator.Generator.Element) must have the same type as the elements of this sequence of sequences (Generator.Element.Generator.Element).
The point of that complex constraint is to ensure that the Sequence remains homogeneous. You can't join sequences of Int with sequences of Double, for example.
If the separator is treated as a Character, this candidate is picked, the result would be: ["C", ",", "a", ",", "t", ",", "!", ",", "🐱"]
The compiler throws an error to ensure you're aware that there's an ambiguity. Otherwise, the program might behave differently than you'd expect.
You can disambiguate this situation by this by explicitly making each Character into a String. Because String is NOT a SequenceType, the #2 candidate is no longer possible.
var myChars: [Character] = ["C", "a", "t", "!", "🐱"]
var anotherVar = myChars.map(String.init).joinWithSeparator(",")
print(anotherVar) //C,a,t,!,🐱
This answer assumes Swift 2.2.
var myChars: [Character] = ["C", "a", "t", "!", "🐱"]
var myStrings = myChars.map({String($0)})
var result = myStrings.joinWithSeparator(",")
joinWithSeparator is only available on String arrays:
extension SequenceType where Generator.Element == String {
/// Interpose the `separator` between elements of `self`, then concatenate
/// the result. For example:
///
/// ["foo", "bar", "baz"].joinWithSeparator("-|-") // "foo-|-bar-|-baz"
#warn_unused_result
public func joinWithSeparator(separator: String) -> String
}
You could create a new extension to support Characters:
extension SequenceType where Generator.Element == Character {
#warn_unused_result
public func joinWithSeparator(separator: String) -> String {
var str = ""
self.enumerate().forEach({
str.append($1)
if let arr = self as? [Character], endIndex: Int = arr.endIndex {
if $0 < endIndex - 1 {
str.append(Character(separator))
}
}
})
return str
}
}
var myChars: [Character] = ["C", "a", "t", "!", "🐱"]
let charStr = myChars.joinWithSeparator(",") // "C,a,t,!,🐱"
Related discussion on Code Review.SE.
Context: Swift3(beta)
TL;DR Goofy Solution
var myChars:[Character] = ["C", "a", "t", "!", "🐱"]
let separators = repeatElement(Character("-"), count: myChars.count)
let zipped = zip(myChars, separators).lazy.flatMap { [$0, $1] }
let joined = String(zipped.dropLast())
Exposition
OK. This drove me nuts. In part because I got caught up in the join semantics. A join method is very useful, but when you back away from it's very specific (yet common) case of string concatenation, it's doing two things at once. It's splicing other elements in with the original sequence, and then it's flattening the 2 deep array of characters (array of strings) into one single array (string).
The OPs use of single characters in an Array sent my brain elsewhere. The answers given above are the simplest way to get what was desired. Convert the single characters to single character strings and then use the join method.
If you want to consider the two pieces separately though... We start with the original input:
var input:[Character] = ["C", "a", "t", "!", "🐱"]
Before we can splice our characters with separators, we need a collection of separators. In this case, we want a pseudo collection that is the same thing repeated again and again, without having to actually make any array with that many elements:
let separators = repeatElement(Character(","), count: myChars.count)
This returns a Repeated object (which oddly enough you cannot instantiate with a regular init method).
Now we want to splice/weave the original input with the separators:
let zipped = zip(myChars, separators).lazy.flatMap { [$0, $1] }
The zip function returns a Zip2Sequence(also curiously must be instantiated via free function rather than direct object reference). By itself, when enumerated the Zip2Sequence just enumerates paired tuples of (eachSequence1, eachSequence2). The flatMap expression turns that into a single series of alternating elements from the two sequences.
For large inputs, this would create a largish intermediary sequence, just to be soon thrown away. So we insert the lazy accessor in there which lets the transform only be computed on demand as we're accessing elements from it (think iterator).
Finally, we know we can make a String from just about any sort of Character sequence. So we just pass this directly to the String creation. We add a dropLast() to avoid the last comma being added.
let joined = String(zipped.dropLast())
The valuable thing about decomposing it this way (it's definitely more lines of code, so there had better be a redeeming value), is that we gain insight into a number of tools we could use to solve problems similar, but not identical, to join. For example, say we want the trailing comma? Joined isn't the answer. Suppose we want a non constant separator? Just rework the 2nd line. Etc...
I am using a 3rd party C library in my iOS application, which I am in the process of converting from Objective-C to Swift. I hit an obstacle when attempting to read one of the structs returned by the C library in Swift.
The struct looks similar to this:
typedef unsigned int LibUint;
typedef unsigned char LibUint8;
typedef struct RequestConfiguration_ {
LibUint8 names[30][128];
LibUint numberNames;
LibUint currentName;
} RequestConfiguration;
Which is imported into Swift as a Tuple containing 30 Tuples of 128 LibUint8 values. After a long time of trial and error using nested withUnsafePointer calls, I eventually began searching for solutions to iterating a Tuple in Swift.
What I ended up using is the following functions:
/**
* Perform iterator on every children of the type using reflection
*/
func iterateChildren<T>(reflectable: T, #noescape iterator: (String?, Any) -> Void) {
let mirror = Mirror(reflecting: reflectable)
for i in mirror.children {
iterator(i.label, i.value)
}
}
/**
* Returns a String containing the characters within the Tuple
*/
func libUint8TupleToString<T>(tuple: T) -> String {
var result = [CChar]()
let mirror = Mirror(reflecting: tuple)
for child in mirror.children {
let char = CChar(child.value as! LibUint8)
result.append(char)
// Null reached, skip the rest.
if char == 0 {
break;
}
}
// Always null terminate; faster than checking if last is null.
result.append(CChar(0))
return String.fromCString(result) ?? ""
}
/**
* Returns an array of Strings by decoding characters within the Tuple
*/
func libUint8StringsInTuple<T>(tuple: T, length: Int = 0) -> [String] {
var idx = 0
var strings = [String]()
iterateChildren(tuple) { (label, value) in
guard length > 0 && idx < length else { return }
let str = libUint8TupleToString(value)
strings.append(str)
idx++
}
return strings
}
Usage
func handleConfiguration(config: RequestConfiguration) {
// Declaration types are added for clarity
let names: [String] = libUint8StringsInTuple(config.names, config.numberNames)
let currentName: String = names[config.currentName]
}
My solution uses reflection to iterate the first Tuple, and reflection to iterate the second, because I was getting incorrect strings when using withUnsafePointer for the nested Tuples, which I assume is due to signage. Surely there must be a way to read the C strings in the array, using an UnsafePointer alike withUsafePointer(&struct.cstring) { String.fromCString(UnsafePointer($0)) }.
To be clear, I'm looking for the fastest way to read these C strings in Swift, even if that involves using Reflection.
Here is a possible solution:
func handleConfiguration(var config: RequestConfiguration) {
let numStrings = Int(config.numberNames)
let lenStrings = sizeofValue(config.names.0)
let names = (0 ..< numStrings).map { idx in
withUnsafePointer(&config.names) {
String.fromCString(UnsafePointer<CChar>($0) + idx * lenStrings) ?? ""
}
}
let currentName = names[Int(config.currentName)]
print(names, currentName)
}
It uses the fact that
LibUint8 names[30][128];
are 30*128 contiguous bytes in memory. withUnsafePointer(&config.names)
calls the closure with $0 as a pointer to the start of that
memory location, and
UnsafePointer<CChar>($0) + idx * lenStrings
is a pointer to the start of the idx-th subarray. The above code requires
that each subarray contains a NUL-terminated UTF-8 string.
The solution suggested by Martin R looks good to me and, as far as I can see from my limited testing, does work. However, as Martin pointed out, it requires that the strings be NUL-terminated UTF-8. Here are two more possible approaches. These follow the principle of handling the complexity of C data structures in C instead of dealing with it in Swift. Which of these approaches you choose depends on what specifically you are doing with RequestConfiguration in your app. If you are not comfortable programming in C, then a pure Swift approach, like the one suggested by Martin, might be a better choice.
For the purposes of this discussion, we will assume that the 3rd party C library has the following function for retrieving RequestConfiguration:
const RequestConfiguration * getConfig();
Approach 1: Make the RequestConfiguration object available to your Swift code, but extract names from it using the following C helper function:
const unsigned char * getNameFromConfig(const RequestConfiguration * rc, unsigned int nameIdx)
{
return rc->names[nameIdx];
}
Both this function's signature and the RequestConfiguration type must be available to the Swift code via the bridging header. You can then do something like this in Swift:
var cfg : UnsafePointer<RequestConfiguration> = getConfig()
if let s = String.fromCString(UnsafePointer<CChar>(getNameFromConfig(cfg, cfg.memory.currentName)))
{
print(s)
}
This approach is nice if you need the RequestConfiguration object available to Swift in order to check the number of names in multiple places, for example.
Approach 2: You just need to be able to get the name at a given position. In this case the RequestConfiguration type does not even need to be visible to Swift. You can write a helper C function like this:
const unsigned char * getNameFromConfig1(unsigned int idx)
{
const RequestConfiguration * p = getConfig();
return p->names[idx];
}
and use it in Swift as follows:
if let s = String.fromCString(UnsafePointer<CChar>(getNameFromConfig1(2)))
{
print(s)
}
This will print the name at position 2 (counting from 0). Of course, with this approach you might also want to have C helpers that return the count of names as well as the current name index.
Again, with these 2 approaches it is assumed the strings are NUL-terminated UTF-8. There are other approaches possible, these are just examples.
Also please note that the above assumes that you access RequestConfiguration as read-only. If you also want to modify it and make the changes visible to the 3rd party library C code, then it's a different ballgame.
I'm trying to build a function with swift that will map an array, divide each value in the array by 3, then spit out a new array. This is what I have so far:
func divideby3Map<T, U>(y: [T], z: T -> U) -> [U] {
let array = [int]()
let divideby3Array = array.map { [y] / 3 }
return dividedby3Array
}
divideby3Map([1,2,3,4,5])
Where T and U are the original array, and the new array being returned respectively, and it's done using generics.
I'm sure this isn't written properly, I'm stuck in terms of the right syntax. For example, since the array being returned is represented by the generic [U], I assume I have to use it somewhere in the array being returned, not sure where though.
When writing a generic function, it’s sometimes easier to approach it in 3 steps: first write the code stand-alone using a specific type. Then write the code as a function, still with a specific type. Finally, change the function to be generic.
The first part, dividing an array by 3, can be done like this:
let a = [1,2,3,4,5]
// map is run on the array of integers, and returns a new
// array with the operation performed on each element in a:
let b = a.map { $0 / 3 }
// so b will be [0,0,1,1,1]
// (don’t forget, integer division truncates)
Note the closure you provide between the { } is an operation that will be applied to each element of the array. $0 represents the element, and you divide it by 3. You could also write it as a.map { i in i / 3 }.
To put this into its own function:
func divideby3Map(source: [Int]) -> [Int] {
return source.map { $0 / 3 }
}
No need to declare a fresh array – map will create one for you. You can then return that directly (you can assign it to a temporary if you prefer, but that isn’t really necessary).
Finally, if you want to make it generic, start by adding a placeholder:
func divideby3Map<T>(source: [T]) -> [T] {
return source.map { $0 / 3 }
}
Note, there’s only a need for one placeholder, T, because you are returning the exact same type you are passed in.
Except… this won’t compile, because the compiler doesn’t know that T is guaranteed to provide two critical things: the ability to divide (a / operator), and the ability to create new T from integer literals (i.e. to create a T with value 3 to divide by). Otherwise, what if we passed an array of strings or an array of arrays in?
To do this, we need to “constrain” T so our function will only accept as arguments types that provide these features. One such protocol we can use to constrain T is IntegerType, which does guarantee these features (as well as some other ones like +, * etc):
func divideby3Map<T: IntegerType>(source: [T]) -> [T] {
return source.map { $0 / 3 }
}
divideby3Map(a) // returns [0,0,1,1,1]
let smallInts: [UInt8] = [3,6,9]
divideby3Map(smallInts) // returns [1,2,3]
Today I was just going through some basic swift concepts and was working with some examples to understand those concepts. Right now I have completed studying tuples.
I have got one doubt i.e, what is the need of using tuples ? Ya I did some digging on this here is what I got :
We can be able to return multiple values from a function. Ok but we can also do this by returning an array.
Array ok but we can return an multiple values of different types. Ok cool but this can also be done by array of AnyObject like this :
func calculateStatistics (scores:[Int])->[AnyObject]
{
var min = scores[0]
var max = scores[0]
var sum = 0
for score in scores
{
if score > max{
max = score
}
else if score < min{
min = score
}
sum += score
}
return [min,max,"Hello"]
}
let statistics = calculateStatistics([25,39,78,66,74,80])
var min = statistics[0]
var max = statistics[1]
var msg = statistics[2] // Contains hello
We can name the objects present in the tuples. Ok but I can use a dictionary of AnyObject.
I am not saying that Why to use tuples when we have got this . But there should be something only tuple can be able to do or its easy to do it only with tuples. Moreover the people who created swift wouldn't have involved tuples in swift if there wasn't a good reason. So there should have been some good reason for them to involve it.
So guys please let me know if there's any specific cases where tuples are the best bet.
Thanks in advance.
Tuples are anonymous structs that can be used in many ways, and one of them is to make returning multiple values from a function much easier.
The advantages of using a tuple instead of an array are:
multiple types can be stored in a tuple, whereas in an array you are restricted to one type only (unless you use [AnyObject])
fixed number of values: you cannot pass less or more parameters than expected, whereas in an array you can put any number of arguments
strongly typed: if parameters of different types are passed in the wrong positions, the compiler will detect that, whereas using an array that won't happen
refactoring: if the number of parameters, or their type, change, the compiler will produce a relevant compilation error, whereas with arrays that will pass unnoticed
named: it's possible to associate a name with each parameter
assignment is easier and more flexible - for example, the return value can be assigned to a tuple:
let tuple = functionReturningTuple()
or all parameters can be automatically extracted and assigned to variables
let (param1, param2, param3) = functionReturningTuple()
and it's possible to ignore some values
let (param1, _, _) = functionReturningTuple()
similarity with function parameters: when a function is called, the parameters you pass are actually a tuple. Example:
// SWIFT 2
func doSomething(number: Int, text: String) {
println("\(number): \(text)")
}
doSomething(1, "one")
// SWIFT 3
func doSomething(number: Int, text: String) {
print("\(number): \(text)")
}
doSomething(number: 1, text: "one")
(Deprecated in Swift 2) The function can also be invoked as:
let params = (1, "one")
doSomething(params)
This list is probably not exhaustive, but I think there's enough to make you favor tuples to arrays for returning multiple values
For example, consider this simple example:
enum MyType {
case A, B, C
}
func foo() -> (MyType, Int, String) {
// ...
return (.B, 42, "bar")
}
let (type, amount, desc) = foo()
Using Array, to get the same result, you have to do this:
func foo() -> [Any] {
// ...
return [MyType.B, 42, "bar"]
}
let result = foo()
let type = result[0] as MyType, amount = result[1] as Int, desc = result[2] as String
Tuple is much simpler and safer, isn't it?
Tuple is a datastructure which is lighter weight than heterogeneous Array. Though they're very similar, in accessing the elements by index, the advantage is tuples can be constructed very easily in Swift. And the intention to introduce/interpolate this(Tuple) data structure is Multiple return types. Returning multiple data from the 'callee' with minimal effort, that's the advantage of having Tuples. Hope this helps!
A tuple is ideally used to return multiple named data from a function for temporary use. If the scope of the tuple is persistent across a program you might want to model that data structure as a class or struct.