Swift Enums and Equatability: With and Without Associated Values

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Swift enums provide a powerful way to model a set of related values. Enums can be equipped with associated values, allowing them to represent a variety of data structures.

In Swift, the Equatable protocol enables instances of a type to be compared for equality. Let's explore how enums behave with and without associated values when conforming to the Equatable protocol.

Swift Enum without Associated Values

Enums without associated values are simpler and automatically conform to the Equatable protocol, as long as they have no raw values.

Here’s an example:

enum Direction {
    case north
    case south
    case east
    case west
}

let direction1 = Direction.north
let direction2 = Direction.south
let direction3 = Direction.north

// Enum cases without associated values are not equal
if direction1 == direction2 {
    print("Both directions are equal")
} else {
    print("Directions are not equal")
}

// Enum cases without associated values are equal
if direction1 == direction3 {
    print("Directions are equal")
} else {
    print("Directions are not equal")
}

In this case, the Direction enum is equatable by default because it has no associated values. The equality comparison is based…