Difference between Array, Set and Dictionary in Swift

Question

I am new to Swift Lang, have seen lots of tutorials, but it's not clear – my question is what's the main difference between the Array, Set and Dictionary collection type?

Answer 1

Here are the practical differences between the different types:

Arrays are effectively ordered lists and are used to store lists of information in cases where order is important.

For example, posts in a social network app being displayed in a tableView may be stored in an array.

Sets are different in the sense that order does not matter and these will be used in cases where order does not matter.

Sets are especially useful when you need to ensure that an item only appears once in the set.

Dictionaries are used to store key, value pairs and are used when you want to easily find a value using a key, just like in a dictionary.

For example, you could store a list of items and links to more information about these items in a dictionary.

Hope this helps :)

(For more information and to find Apple's own definitions, check out Apple's guides at https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/CollectionTypes.html)