When you save a text in a constant or a variable, your are saving a string in Swift. Furthermore, you can see a string as a serie of characters. For that reason, you can access to the content of a string in various ways, such as Collection (Array i.e.) of characters.
Initialize a String
A string literal is a text writed with a double quote at beginning and at the end. So, if you need to save a text in a constant or a variable, you only must to assign a string literal to it.
let coach = "Ted Lasso"
var team = "AFC Richmond"
NOTE: It is fundamental remember that strings are case sensitive. So, "a simple string" it is different of "A simple string".
Concatenating strings
If you need to save the value of two strings in another constant or variable, you can concatenate it.
It is as easy as use the operator + between the two values when you have to assign it.
let name = "Michael"
let lastName = "Scott"
let funnyBoss = name + lastName
Another way, it is to use the operator += to add text to a previous initialized string
var spy = "Bond"
spy += ", James Bond"
In the above example, the final value of spy is Bond, James Bond
And, as a String is a Collection of characters, you can also use the method .append()
var greet = "Hello, world"
greet.append("!")
In the last code, greet value is Hello, world!
String interpolation
But maybe the most used feature in Strings could be String interpolation. It allows use constants or variables values inside a string.
In this case, you can do it, writing the constant or variable name, inside parenthesis "()", and starting with a backlash "". That is \(variableName)
let name = "Forest"
let fullName = "Forest Gump"
let introduction = "Hello, I am \(name), \(fullName)"
The final value of introduction is "Hello, I am Forest, Forest Gump"
Multiline String
Finishing (althought it is not used often in real world apps) maybe sometimes you need to save larger texts in a string, and it could be difficult read the value for others programmers o for yourself. In this case, you can use a multiline string.
To save a multiline string, you only need to write three quotation marks at the beginning, and finish with another three in a single line. For example:
let text = """
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep;
"""
First triple double quotes doesn't need to be in a single line, but it helps to focus in text value.
You can see useful methods in the post Useful String methods in Swift
Happy coding! 👨🏻💻