Swift if statement - multiple conditions separated by commas?

Marcus Leon picture Marcus Leon · Feb 16, 2016 · Viewed 25.3k times · Source

Looking at a Swift example:

if let sourceViewController = sender.sourceViewController as? MealViewController, meal = sourceViewController.meal {
    ...
}

The doc states:

... the code assigns that view controller to the local constant sourceViewController, and checks to see if the meal property on sourceViewController is nil.

Question: Does Swift let you have multiple conditions in your if statement when separated by commas (as in this example with the comma after MealViewController)?

Haven't seen this in the docs.

Answer

Luca Angeletti picture Luca Angeletti · Feb 16, 2016

Yes when you write

if let a = optA, let b = optB, let c = optC {

}

Swift does execute the body of the IF only if all the assignments are properly completed.

More

Another feature of this technique: the assignments are done in order.

So only if a value is properly assigned to a, Swift tries to assign a value to b. And so on.

This allows you to use the previous defined variable/constant like this

if let a = optA, let b = a.optB {

}

In this case (in second assignment) we are safely using a because we know that if that code is executed, then a has been populated with a valid value.