Advanced Pattern Matching

Value-Binding Pattern

released Fri, 15 Feb 2019
Swift Version 5.0

Value-Binding Pattern

This is the very same as binding values to variables via let or var. Only in a switch statement. You've already seen this before, so I'll provide a very short example:

switch (4, 5) {

case let (x, y): print(\"\(x) \(y)\")

}

The let (x, y) in the example above will take the values of our (4, 5) tuple and write them into two new variables named x and y.

We can easily combine this with the other pattern matching operations to develop very powerful patterns. Imagine you have a function that returns an optional tuple (username: String, password: String)?. You'd like to match it and make sure if the password is correct:

First, our fantastic function (just a prototype):

func usernameAndPassword() 

     -> (username: String, password: String)? {... }

Now, the switch example:

switch usernameAndPassword() {

case let (_, password)? where password == \"12345\": login()

default: logout()

}

See how we combined multiple Swift features here, we will go through them step by step:

  1. We use case let to create new variables
  2. We use the ? operator to only match if the optional return value from the usernameAndPassword function is not empty.
  3. We ignore the username part via _, because we're only interested in the password
  4. We use where to make sure our highly secure password is correct
  5. We use default for all the other cases that fail.