CS193P IOS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT FALL 2017

Reading Assignment I:
Intro to Swift
Objective
The goal of our first week of reading assignments is to start to get a handle on this new
language you must learn called Swift. This week covers basic stuff like variables and
control flow, but also more trickier topics like Optionals, manipulating Strings and the
syntax for defining classes and struct and their methods and properties.
Most of you have not had experience with Objective-C, but don’t worry about that.
Nothing in the Swift documentation really assumes that. However, if you have never
programmed in C (or C++ or any other variant), then Swift might be extremely new to
you (but hopefully still not too steep a hill to climb to learn).
Read all of the material referenced here by the start of Lecture 3. Set aside sufficient
time because there’s quite a bit of reading here. You will only have reading assignments
in the first few weeks of this course.

Materials
• The reading in this assignment comes from two on-line documents: the Swift
Programming Language and the Swift API Guidelines.

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 CS193P IOS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT FALL 2017

Swift Programming Language

Read the sections described below in the Swift Programming Language. To better
utilize your valuable time and to emphasize important concepts, the sections in the
reading have been annotated with three colors:

Red sections are VERY IMPORTANT and might be more difficult to understand. Read
these carefully.

Yellow sections are important, but probably won’t be as difficult to understand.

Grayed-out sections are not required reading (this week). They may be in future weeks.

Don’t gloss over reading any NOTE text (inside gray boxes)—many of those things are
quite important. However, if a NOTE refers to Objective-C or bridging, you can ignore it.

If there is a link to another section in the text, you don’t have to follow that link unless
what it links to is also part of this week’s reading assignment.

Note that a random sampling of the topics in the list below have links. There are not link
destinations available for all topics, unfortunately, but for ones that exist, the link is
included. This is just a way to help you jump to the “ballpark” of where a topic is.
Linked topics are not any more or less important than any other topic.

In the Language Guide area, read the following sections in the following chapters:

The Basics
Constants and Variables
Comments
Semicolons
Integers
Floating-Point Numbers
Type Safety and Type Inference
Numeric Literals
Numeric Type Conversion
Type Aliases
Booleans
Tuples
Optionals
Error Handling
Assertions and Preconditions

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 CS193P IOS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT FALL 2017

Basic Operators
Terminology
Assignment Operator
Arithmetic Operators
Compound Assignment Operators
Comparison Operators
Ternary Conditional Operator
Nil-Coalescing Operator
Range Operators
Logical Operators

Strings and Characters

String Literals
Initializing an Empty String
String Mutability
Strings Are Value Types
Working with Characters
Concatenating Strings and Characters
String Interpolation
Unicode
Counting Characters
Accessing and Modifying a String
Substrings
Comparing Strings
Unicode Representations of Strings

Collection Types
Mutability of Collections
Arrays
Sets
Performing Set Operations
Dictionaries

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 CS193P IOS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT FALL 2017

Control Flow
For-In Loops
While Loops
Conditional Statements
If
Switch
No Implicit Fallthrough
Interval Matching
Tuples
Value Bindings
Where
Compound Cases
Control Transfer Statements
Continue
Break
Fallthrough
Labeled Statements
Early Exit
Checking API Availability

Functions
Defining and Calling Functions
Function Parameters and Return Values
Functions Without Parameters
Functions With Multiple Parameters
Functions Without Return Values
Functions With Multiple Return Values
Function Argument Labels and Parameter Names
Specifying Argument Labels
Omitting Argument Labels
Default Parameter Values
Variadic Parameters
In-Out Parameters
Function Types
Nested Functions

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 CS193P IOS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT FALL 2017

Closures

Enumerations

Classes and Structures

Comparing Classes and Structures
Structures and Enumerations Are Value Types (ignore enumerations)
Classes Are Reference Types
Choosing Between Classes and Structures
Assignment and Copy Behavior for Strings, Arrays and Dictionaries

Properties
Stored Properties
Computed Properties
Property Observers
Global and Local Variables
Type Properties

Methods
Instance Methods
The self Property
Modifying Value Types from Within Instance Methods
Assigning to self Within a Mutating Method
Type Methods

Subscripts

Inheritance
Defining a Base Class
Subclassing
Overriding
Accessing Superclass Methods, Properties, and Subscripts
Overriding Methods
Overriding Properties
Preventing Overrides

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 CS193P IOS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT FALL 2017

Initialization
Setting Initial Values for Stored Properties
Customizing Initialization
Default Initializers
Class Inheritance and Initialization
Failable Initializers
Required Initializers
Setting a Default Property Value with a Closure or Function

Unicode variable and constant names (e.g., 🔥 ) can be fun, but you will be held
accountable for the quality of your naming (of all kinds) and readability in your
code.

Do not put semicolons at the ends of lines (only use them to (very rarely, if ever)
separate two statements on a single line).


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 CS193P IOS APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT FALL 2017

Swift API Guidelines

Read the Swift API Guidelines document in its entirety.

Given that you are completely new to Swift, some of what is in this document will
be a bit hard to fully absorb at first. But familiarizing yourself with what is in this
document is crucial to writing good Swift code. So, for this assignment, the goal
is to know what’s there rather than completely and fully master the guidelines
right off the bat. As the quarter progresses, you should eventually become an
expert namer of properties, methods and other Swift constructs. This will require
you to refer back to this document often.

Be sure to click everywhere that it says “MORE DETAIL”.

Pay special attention to the “Write a documentation comment” section.

Pay special attention to the “Follow case conventions” section.

Pay special attention to the entire “Argument Labels” section.

You can ignore (for now), points that reference Protocols. When we learn about
Protocols next week, be sure to check back with this document after that.

You can also ignore the final section (Special Instructions) for now.

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