swift force-unwrapping exception not propagated

Question

I\'ve run into this silly behaviour in swift where force-unwrapping an optional does not propagate.

From the documentation:

Trying to use ! to

Answer 1

this 'self explanatory' example can help you to see the difference between raising an runtime exception and throwing an error E conforming to ErrorType protocol.

struct E: ErrorType{}
func foo(bar:String?) throws {
    if let error = bar where error == "error" {
            throw E()
    }
    print(bar, "is valid parameter, but don't try to access bar.characters, it crash your code! (if bar == nil)")
    // here is everything OK 
    let bar = bar!
    // but here it crash!!
    _ = bar.characters
}

do {
    try foo("error")
    // next line is not accessible here ...
    try foo(nil)
} catch {
    print("\"error\" as parameter of foo() throws an ERROR!")
}
do {
    try foo(nil) // fatal error: unexpectedly found nil while unwrapping an Optional value
} catch {

}

it prints

"error" as parameter of foo() throws an ERROR!
nil is valid parameter, but don't try to access bar.characters, it crash your code! (if bar == nil)
fatal error: unexpectedly found nil while unwrapping an Optional value

raising an runtime exception is fatal error in your code.