I do not understand why i need string interpolation

Question

Curious to know why i need to use string interpolation with the self.description statement. When i was working through everything, I thought I had written everything I needed to, but when I looked up the question on the internet, I was missing the interpolated part (below is what i did) And again, I just don't understand why we need string interpolation in the statement, can someone please explain, in detail, why?

structs.swift

struct RGBColor {
    let red: Double
    let green: Double
    let blue: Double
    let alpha: Double

    let description: String

    // THIS WOULD BE WHAT I WROTE BELOW
    init(red:Double, green:Double, blue:Double, alpha:Double) {
        self.red = 86.0
        self.green = 191.0
        self.blue = 131.0
        self.alpha = 1.0

        self.description

    }

}

Answer 1 · 2017-08-31T21:01:17Z

August 31, 2017 9:01pm

Excerpt from the challenge: "For example, given the values 86.0 for red, 191.0 for green, 131.0 for blue and 1.0 for alpha, each of the stored properties should hold these values and the description property should look like this: "red: 86.0, green: 191.0, blue: 131.0, alpha: 1.0"

You want description to represent the RGB values with one single String. This might come in handy for debugging, for example, as you can quickly print all colors via print(instanceOfRGBColor.description)

However, all color values and alpha are of type Double. This is where string interpolation comes in handy. test would combine everything to a convenient String:

// Variables of any type can be inserted in a string by enclosing them with \()
let test = "red: \(red), green: \(green), blue: \(blue), alpha: \(alpha)"

In your code, the description value needs to be assigned a value at initialization, this is mandatory.

So instead of having this in your initializer...

// self.description only is invalid syntax. This will only work in playgrounds
self.description

...you have to assign description an actual value. As requested for this challenge, it has to be like the example string: "red: 86.0, green: 191.0, blue: 131.0, alpha: 1.0"

Therefore, it should be:

// self.description only is invalid syntax. This will only work in playgrounds
self.description = "red: \(red), green: \(green), blue: \(blue), alpha: \(alpha)"

Also, with your code, although the initializer is correct, you are actually not using the values you are passing in. Actually, you are giving them fixed values, so whatever values you are passing the initializer, it will still always the same.

These things combined with your code:

struct RGBColor {
    let red: Double
    let green: Double
    let blue: Double
    let alpha: Double
    let description: String

    init(red: Double, green: Double, blue: Double, alpha: Double) {
        self.red = red
        self.green = green
        self.blue = blue
        self.alpha = alpha
        // Assigning the interpolated String to description, just
        // as the other values
        self.description = "red: \(red), green: \(green), blue: \(blue), alpha: \(alpha)"
    }
}

I hope that makes sense :)

Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Looking to learn something new?

Eddie Aguilar

Eddie Aguilar

I do not understand why i need string interpolation

1 Answer

Martin Wildfeuer

Martin Wildfeuer