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Articles, snippets and thoughts about code from Andrew Lord.

Safely index items within a collection

Published on · Updated on
1 minute read

We can make some great things with extensions in Swift, as well as subscript functions. This one allows us to safely access collection elements by index, getting back an optional instead of errors being thrown!

extension Collection {
subscript(safe index: Index) -> Element? {
indices.contains(index) ? self[index] : nil
}
}

let numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4]
numbers[safe: 3] // 4
numbers[safe: 10] // nil, no error

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Hi, I hope you enjoyed the article. I am Andrew - a builder of apps and developer tools. Articles on the blog focus on all aspects of Android and iOS development using Kotlin and Swift.

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