If you try to read a value from a dictionary using a key that doesn’t exist, Swift will send you back nil
– nothing at all. While this might be what you want, there’s an alternative: we can provide the dictionary with a default value to use if we request a missing key.
To demonstrate this, let’s create a dictionary of favorite ice creams for two people:
let favoriteIceCream = [
"Paul": "Chocolate",
"Sophie": "Vanilla"
]
We can read Paul’s favorite ice cream like this:
favoriteIceCream["Paul"]
But if we tried reading the favorite ice cream for Charlotte, we’d get back nil, meaning that Swift doesn’t have a value for that key:
favoriteIceCream["Charlotte"]
We can fix this by giving the dictionary a default value of “Unknown”, so that when no ice cream is found for Charlotte we get back “Unknown” rather than nil:
favoriteIceCream["Charlotte", default: "Unknown"]
SPONSORED Still waiting on your CI build? Speed it up ~3x with Blaze - change one line, pay less, keep your existing GitHub workflows. First 25 HWS readers to use code HACKING at checkout get 50% off the first year. Try it now for free!
Sponsor Hacking with Swift and reach the world's largest Swift community!
Link copied to your pasteboard.