In Swift, what's the cleanest way to get the last two items in an Array?

Question

Is there a cleaner way to get the last two items of an array in Swift? In general, I try to avoid this approach since it\'s so easy to be off-by-one with the indexes. (Using

Answer 1

With Swift 5, according to your needs, you may choose one of the following patterns in order to get a new array from the last two elements of an array.

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#1. Using Array's suffix(_:)

With Swift, objects that conform to Collection protocol have a suffix(_:) method. Array's suffix(_:) has the following declaration:

func suffix(_ maxLength: Int) -> ArraySlice

Returns a subsequence, up to the given maximum length, containing the final elements of the collection.

Usage:

let array = [1, 2, 3, 4]
let arraySlice = array.suffix(2)
let newArray = Array(arraySlice)
print(newArray) // prints: [3, 4]

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#2. Using Array's subscript(_:)

As an alternative to suffix(_:) method, you may use Array's subscript(_:) subscript:

let array = [1, 2, 3, 4]
let range = array.index(array.endIndex, offsetBy: -2) ..< array.endIndex
//let range = array.index(array.endIndex, offsetBy: -2)... // also works
let arraySlice = array[range]
let newArray = Array(arraySlice)
print(newArray) // prints: [3, 4]