What are literals in Swift?
Wale MoshoodA sequence of characters representing constant values stored in variables is referred to as a literal. Literals play a significant role in dealing with values within a program.
Examples of Swift literals are shown below:
"Hi, there!" 3.33333 33
There are different types of Swift literals. They are discussed below:
1. String literals
A string literal is a sequence of characters wrapped with a starting double quote and a closing double quote. Special characters are used in string literals to form a branch of string literals known as an escape sequence.
The difference between a string and a character literal is that a string literal contains a sequence of characters, while a character literal contains a single character. An example is shown below:
var sampleCharacter: Character = "S" print(sampleCharacter) var sampleString: String = "My name is Sam" print(sampleString)
Output
S
My name is Sam
2. Integer literals
Integer literals are divided into the following:
- Binary literals: It starts with the prefix
0b. It represents binary values. - Decimal literals: Every value declared in an integer literal is of type decimal. Hence, it is not preceded by any number or character as in the binary literals above.
- Hexadecimal literals: It starts with the prefix
0x. It is used to represent hexadecimal values. - Octal literals: It starts with the prefix
0o. It is used to represent octal values.
Some examples are shown below:
let binaryInteger = 0b10001 print(binaryInteger) let decimalInteger = 17 print(decimalInteger) let octalInteger = 0o21 print(octalInteger) let hexadecimalInteger = 0x11 print(hexadecimalInteger)
Output
17
17
17
17
3. Floating point literals
Floating point literals can either be represented in decimal form or hexadecimal form.
- Decimal floating-point literals: They are made up of a sequence of decimal digits and a decimal fraction or a decimal exponent, or both.
- Hexadecimal floating-point literals: It comprises a
0xprefix, an optional hexadecimal fraction, and a hexadecimal exponent.
An example is shown below:
let sampleDecimalFloat = 3.14e2 print(sampleDecimalFloat) let sampleHexadecimalFloat = 0xFp10 print(sampleHexadecimalFloat)
Output
314.0
15360.0
4. Boolean literals
There are two types of boolean literals. They are:
- true
- false
An example is shown below:
let sample1: Bool = true print(sample1) let sample2: Bool = false print(sample2)
Output
true
false
RELATED TAGS
CONTRIBUTOR
Wale MoshoodView all Courses
