In Swift 2.0 what is the maximum length of a string?

Question

I have an application which utilizes a single string. This string contains data loaded from an array and then the string is exported to a text file.

My question is what is the longest length possible for this string, and when does it become a problem that it is getting too long?

Answer 1

Following the official Apple documentation:

String is bridged to Objective-C as NSString, and a String that originated in Objective-C may store its characters in an NSString.

Since all devices were capable of running iOS are 32 bit, this means NSUIntegerMax is 2^32.

According to Swift opensource GitHub repo It would seem that its value is 2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 ; hexadecimal 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF for the 64 bit devices, following this code:

#if __LP64__ || TARGET_OS_EMBEDDED || TARGET_OS_IPHONE || TARGET_OS_WIN32 || NS_BUILD_32_LIKE_64
typedef long NSInteger;
typedef unsigned long NSUInteger;
#else
typedef int NSInteger;
typedef unsigned int NSUInteger;
#endif

// + (instancetype)
    //     stringWithCharacters:(const unichar *)chars length:(NSUInteger)length
...
maxLength:(NSUInteger)maxBufferCount
...

TEST: (on iPhone 6)