Why Choose Struct Over Class?

Question

Playing around with Swift, coming from a Java background, why would you want to choose a Struct instead of a Class? Seems like they are the same thing, with a Struct offeri

Answer 1

In Swift, a new programming pattern has been introduced known as Protocol Oriented Programming.

Creational Pattern:

In swift, Struct is a value types which are automatically cloned. Therefore we get the required behavior to implement the prototype pattern for free.

Whereas classes are the reference type, which is not automatically cloned during the assignment. To implement the prototype pattern, classes must adopt the NSCopying protocol.

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Shallow copy duplicates only the reference, that points to those objects whereas deep copy duplicates object’s reference.

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Implementing deep copy for each reference type has become a tedious task. If classes include further reference type, we have to implement prototype pattern for each of the references properties. And then we have to actually copy the entire object graph by implementing the NSCopying protocol.

class Contact{
  var firstName:String
  var lastName:String
  var workAddress:Address // Reference type
}

class Address{
   var street:String
   ...
} 

By using structs and enums, we made our code simpler since we don’t have to implement the copy logic.