How to implement functions count and dropLast in swift, IOS? - ios

Question

I am making calculator in Swift. Stuck in backspace button. If user press wrong digit then backspace button would help to delete digit off the display.
Though I wrote dropLast function and works. It return appropriate result. How to use count method, don't understand the return type of count method.
#IBOutlet weak var display: UILabel!
#IBAction func backspace() {
//how to use count method to check collection of elements
//dropLast drop the last digit and display result
let dropedDigit = dropLast(display.text!)
display.text = dropedDigit
}

Answer 1

How about something like this:
private func dropLast(text: String) -> String {
let endIndex = advance(text.endIndex, -1)
return text.substringToIndex(endIndex)
}
It calculates the index where you want to make the cut (endIndex of text - 1) and then returns the substring to this index. This function should drop the last character.
I am not using count method here, but for you reference Swift 1.2 introduces count(<#x: T#>) method that calculates length of sets including Strings.

Answer 2

I know this thread is outdated, but I just went through the process of making this work, myself, in Swift 2.2, and figured I could help answer it.
#IBAction func delButton(sender: AnyObject) {
if display.text != nil {
var tempString = Array(display.text!.characters)
tempString.removeLast(1)
display.text = ""
for num in 0..<tempString.count {
display.text = display.text! + String(tempString[num])
}
}
}
Basically, we're checking to see that the display label has stuff in it, so we don't throw an error, and if so, making a variable in the scope of the function to hold the label's characters individually in a string. After that, we remove the last character from the array, clear out the label to ensure we aren't adding what's already there to our new values, then iterating through the updated array of characters and adding it to the label.
It's important to note that we are casting the values contained in the array as String, because they've been put into the array as character values, which operate differently than the string value the label is expecting.
Like I said, I know the thread is a little out of date, but I've been going through courses in Swift, and have discovered that while there is a plethora of information out there for Objective-C, there is perilously little information out there for how to do a lot of those things in Swift. Since the language is being updated repeatedly, I've noticed a growing divide between the two languages.