Flight School Guide to Swift Numbers

By

Flight School

Swift 4 overhauled its number system to adopt a protocol-oriented design. Not only does that simplify the way you work with integer and floating-point numbers, but it allows anyone to define their own numeric types that look and feel like they’re built-in.

This guide offers a comprehensive look at what's new, and how to take advantage of these changes in your own apps. 

The first chapter takes a deep dive into how numbers work on computers in general and in Swift specifically. After reading it, you’ll be able to represent integers in binary, decimal, and hexadecimal, explain how signed integers store positive and negative numbers using two’s complement, convert bit patterns into decimal floating-point numbers, and much more.

From there, the book looks at different ways you can use numbers, such as:

• Working with money, using the Decimal type and creating a Currency type
  
• Performing dimensional analysis and physical calculations using the Foundation units & measurements API and Playground live views 
  
• Formatting numbers in a locale-appropriate way for a global audience

Each chapter starts with a delightful illustration from Lauren Mendez (@littleloboart). There are also plenty of sample code projects provided as Playground files.

About Flight School

Flight School is a book series for advanced Swift developers that explores essential topics in iOS and macOS development through concise, focused guides.

If you'd like to get in touch, feel free to message us on Twitter (@flightdotschool) or email us at info@flight.school.

About the Author

Mattt (@mattt) is a writer and developer in Portland, Oregon. He spent the last 3 years at Apple as a technical writer, contributing to The Swift Programming Language, Swift Package Manager, and Swift.org. Before that, Mattt founded NSHipster, a weekly publication for iOS and macOS developers, and maintained several open source libraries, including AFNetworking and Alamofire.

About the Illustrator

Lauren Mendez (@littleloboart) is an illustrator, designer, and storyteller living in Vancouver, Washington. Her delightful and expressive illustrations in Flight School evoke the spirit of flight in its golden age, inviting readers to reach new heights of understanding.