Using “if let…” with many expressions

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Update for Swift 1.2

Since Swift 1.2, if let allows unwrapping multiple optionals, so you can now just write this, as in your example:

if let x = someDict[someKey], y = someDict[someOtherKey] { … }

You can even interleave conditions such as:

if let x = someDict[someKey] where x == "value", y = someDict[someOtherKey] { … }

This used to be valid before Swift 1.2

Here’s how you would do it without an ugly force-upwrapping:

switch (dict["a"], dict["b"]) {
case let (.Some(a), .Some(b)):
    println("match")
default:
    println("no match")
}

Still pretty verbose, actually.

This works because an optional type of the form Type? is actually shorthand for Optional<Type>, which is an enum that looks roughly like this:

enum Optional<T> {
    case None
    case Some(T)
}

You can then use pattern matching as for any other enum.

Edit: I’ve seen people write helper functions like this one (sorry for the lack of attribution, I don’t remember where I saw it):

func unwrap<A, B>(a: A?, b: B?) -> (A, B)? {
    switch (a, b) {
    case let (.Some(a), .Some(b)):
        return (a, b)
    default:
        return nil
    }
}

Then you can keep using the if let construct, namely like this:

if let (a, b) = unwrap(dict["a"], dict["b"]) {
    println("match: \(a), \(b)")
} else {
    println("no match")
}

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