Improved optionality of primitive and collection types [Sep 24]

You will love today's update!

1. Variables of primitive types are unwrapped early to avoid optionals

Variables of primitive types like Int are now unwrapped immediately when declared.

Consider the following sample (from Apple's Sketch sample project):

Previous output:

Try it online and switch between Swift 5.0 and 5.1 to see the difference!

2. Variables of string and collection types are initialized with nil

Previously, strings and collections were initialized with empty literals (when an initializer is required in Swift, but missing in Objective-C).

Now we are using nil initializers by default, for better compatibility with Objective-C code.

Try it online and switch between Swift 5.0 and 5.1 to see the difference!

3. Pointers to primitive types are no longer converted to arrays

Previously, variables declared as pointers to primitive types (like Int*) were converted to Swift arrays.

Now, these declarations are converted to UnsafePointer variables, which exactly matches the way how such declarations are imported by Xcode.

Try it online and switch between Swift 5.0 and 5.1 to see the difference!