What’s the difference between a function and a method?
Swift version: 5.2
Some folks use “function” and “method” interchangeably, but there’s a small difference: both of them are reusable chunks of code, but methods belong to classes, structs, and enums, whereas functions do not.
So:
func thisIsAFunction() {
}
struct Person {
func thisIsAMethod() {
}
}Because methods always belong to a data type, they have a concept of self that functions do not. This is a special value passed in by Swift, and it refers to whatever instance the method was called on.
Swift uses the same keyword, func, for both functions and methods.
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Available from iOS 9.0
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