What does an exclamation mark mean in the Swift language?

Question

The Swift Programming Language guide has the following example:

class Person {
    let name: String
    init(name: String) { self.name = name }
    var apar         


        

Answer 1

If john were an optional var (declared thusly)

var john: Person?

then it would be possible for john to have no value (in ObjC parlance, nil value)

The exclamation point basically tells the compiler "I know this has a value, you don't need to test for it". If you didn't want to use it, you could conditionally test for it:

if let otherPerson = john {
    otherPerson.apartment = number73
}

The interior of this will only evaluate if john has a value.