Subscripts can now declare default arguments

Paul Hudson      @twostraws

When adding custom subscripts to a type, you can now use default arguments for any of the parameters. For example, if we had a PoliceForce struct with a custom subscript to read officers from the force, we could add a default parameter to send back if someone tries to read an index outside of the array’s bounds:

struct PoliceForce {
    var officers: [String]

    subscript(index: Int, default default: String = "Unknown") -> String {
        if index >= 0 && index < officers.count {
            return officers[index]
        } else {
            return `default`
        }
    }
}

let force = PoliceForce(officers: ["Amy", "Jake", "Rosa", "Terry"])
print(force[0])
print(force[5])

That will print “Amy” then “Unknown”, with the latter being caused because there is no officer at index 5. Note that you do need to write your parameter labels twice if you want them to be used, because subscripts don’t use parameter labels otherwise.

So, because I use default default in my subscript, I can use a custom value like this:

print(force[-1, default: "The Vulture"])

Sponsor Hacking with Swift and reach the world's largest Swift community!

Other changes in Swift 5.2…

• Key path expressions as functions
• Callable values of user-defined nominal types
• Lazy filtering order is now reversed
• New and improved diagnostics

Download all Swift 5.2 changes as a playground Link to Swift 5.2 changes

Browse changes in all Swift versions