A naukri.com initiative
Lostmoa
4w
239
Image Credit: Lostmoa
Noncopyable types in Swift
- Swift types are copyable by default, which can result in unintended issues.
- Swift 5.9 introduced noncopyable types which guarantees unique ownership of the value and enforces stricter constraints.
- Noncopyable types can't be copied and can only be moved. Classes can't be declared noncopyable.
- Noncopyable types incorporate borrowing, mutating and consuming methods providing temporary read, write and self ownership mutation access to the instance.
- When passing noncopyable types as arguments to functions, Swift requires to specify the ownership model for that function.
- Swift allows noncopyable structs and enums to have deinitializers which run automatically at the end of the instance's lifetime.
- Swift introduced the discard operator to stop the deinitializer from being called which risks redundant operations in cases where both a consuming method and a deinitializer perform cleanup.
- Noncopyable types are invaluable in scenarios where unique ownership is essential, e.g., single-use tokens, cryptographic keys, or database connections.
- This article ultimately points to the efficiency in code writing for better system clarity and safety.
- Swift provides a powerful tool for ensuring safety and clarity in critical systems as it evolves over the years and focusing on performance and correctness.
Read Full Article
14 Likes
For uninterrupted reading, download the app