Mutating in Swift

Vishal Verma

29 April 2021

In mutable value may be intialised and it get changed any time, while in case of immutable value is intialised once and never changed(like constants values). In swift, classes are reference type and every change in a reference type will modify the value allocated in that place of memory or reference whereas structures and enumerations are value types and that means that every change on them will just modify that value. The properties of value types cannot be modified within its instance methods by default. So, for modification the properties of it, you have to use the “mutating” keyword in the instance method.

From mutating keyword, struct or enum methods have ability to change the values of the properties and change it as according you want. Let discuus with the examples for struct and classes:

Mutating Example for Struct

Let’s create the simple struct as:

struct ForStruct { private var data : String? }

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struct ForStruct {
private var data : String?
}

Now intialise the struct.

var structObj = ForSruct()

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var structObj = ForSruct()

When you are trying to decalre the value in struct then it will display the error.

To resolve this error we have to use mutating method in the struct as:

struct ForSruct{ private var data : String? public mutating func addNew(_ new: String){ self.data = new } }

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struct ForSruct{
     private var data : String?

    public mutating func addNew(_ new: String){
    self.data = new
    }

}

And we declare it as,

var structObj = ForSruct() structObj.addNew("Value")

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var structObj = ForSruct()

structObj.addNew("Value")

Now it will work fine.

Mutating Example for Class

Lets create the class with mutating method as:

class ForClass{ private var classData: String? public mutating func addNew(_ new: String){ self.classData = new } }

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class ForClass{
    private var classData: String?

    public mutating func addNew(_ new: String){
    self.classData = new
    }

}

But mutating methods shows error with the class.

Now remove it from the method and it will start working normaly.

class ForClass{ private var classData: String? public func addNew(_ new: String){ self.classData = new } }

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class ForClass{
    private var classData: String?

    public func addNew(_ new: String){
    self.classData = new
    }

}

You can change any value property on a even when the class itself is created as a constant.

Conclusion

I hope this blog will help you in understanding the behaviour of mutating keyword with struct and class, if you have any comments, questions, or recommendations, feel free to post them in the comment section below!

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