Iterate through a String Swift 2.0

Question

I am trying to do a very simple piece of code in Swift playgrounds.

var word = "Zebra"  for i in word {   print(i) } 

However, I always get an error on line 3.

'String' does not have a member named 'Generator'

Any ideas on why this doesn't work? Note: I am working in Xcode 7, with Swift 2.0 (Strings and Characters).

Answer 1

As of Swift 2, String doesn't conform to SequenceType. However, you can use the characters property on String. characters returns a String.CharacterView which conforms to SequenceType and so can be iterated through with a for loop:

let word = "Zebra"  for i in word.characters {     print(i) } 

Alternatively, you could add an extension to String to make it conform to SequenceType:

extension String: SequenceType {}  // Now you can use String in for loop again. for i in "Zebra" {     print(i) } 

Although, I'm sure Apple had a reason for removing String's conformance to SequenceType and so the first option seems like the better choice. It's interesting to explore what's possible though.

Answer 2

String doesn't conform to SequenceType anymore. However you can access the characters property of it this way:

var word = "Zebra"  for i in word.characters {     print(i) } 

Note that the documentation hasn't been updated yet.