Swift Programming Tutorial: Guard Statement
Understand the Swift Guard Statement in Just a Few Minutes
I’ll admit, the guard statement is one of those concepts that took me some time to really understand. After all, why should I use it when there’s already an if statement to do the same thing?
This article is part of my Swift Programming Tutorial series.
Let’s start with the usual first question: what’s a guard statement, anyway?
In Swift, the guard statement ensures that certain conditions are met before proceeding with the rest of your code. It’s like saying, ‘If this isn’t true, stop and handle it.’ It’s especially useful for early exits in a function when something goes wrong, making your code cleaner and easier to follow.
The keyword here is “early exit”. If you forget the concept of the guard statement, just remember that keyword.
Why Use Guard?
The guard statement is basically designed for these two scenarios:
- To validate inputs early: You check if something is valid, and if not, exit the function early. In cases where the code takes some time to finish, an early exit if condion isn’t true can improve your app’s performance.
- To unwrap optionals safely…
