Working with Associated Values in Swift Enums

Enums in Swift can have associated values, allowing them to store additional information along with each case. This feature is particularly useful when you need to associate different values with each case of an enum. Let's explore how to work with associated values in Swift enums with a simple example:

enum Result {
    case success(String)
    case failure(Error)
}

func processResult(result: Result) {
    switch result {
    case .success(let message):
        print("Success: \(message)")
    case .failure(let error):
        print("Failure: \(error.localizedDescription)")
    }
}

let successResult = Result.success("Data retrieved successfully")
let errorResult = Result.failure(NSError(domain: "com.example", code: 404, userInfo: nil))

processResult(result: successResult)
processResult(result: errorResult)}

In this example, we define an enum called `Result` with two cases: `success` and `failure`. The `success` case has an associated value of type `String`, while the `failure` case has an associated value of type `Error`. We then define a function `processResult` that takes a `Result` enum as a parameter and prints either the success message or the error description based on the case.

When creating instances of the `Result` enum, we provide the associated values for each case. We can access these associated values using pattern matching in a switch statement within the `processResult` function. This allows us to handle different outcomes based on the associated values stored within each enum instance.

Working with associated values in Swift enums can make your code more concise and expressive, especially when dealing with different kinds of data or errors. It provides a flexible way to model data structures that have varying content based on different scenarios.