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iOS Swift Functions and Optionals Optionals What is an Optional?

Challenge Task of Optional Quiz

can anyone explain what is wrong with my code? and also explain about the optionals?

search.swift
func search(#name: String) -> String? {
    let names = ["Doc","Grumpy","Happy","Sleepy","Bashful","Sneezy","Dopey"]
    for n in names {
        if n == name {
            return n
        }
    }
    return nil
}

if let result = search(name: "DOC") {
println("Found")
}

1 Answer

Brendan Whiting
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Brendan Whiting
Front End Web Development Techdegree Graduate 84,735 Points

when you called the "search" function at the bottom, you asked it to find "DOC" instead of "Doc", and it is case sensitive, so it didn't match, and didn't print out "Found".

Optionals are a data type that can contain something, or be nil - contain nothing. In this case, the "String?" type can be a string or it can be nil. In this case, there's a possibility that you could ask for a name, and there would be no match. You also need to check to see if there's a value inside an optional before "unwrapping" it, otherwise your program could crash.