How to shuffle an array in Swift
This tutorial belongs to the Swift series
Suppose you have an array in Swift, like this:
var items = 1...3
and you want to shuffle it, so that you get its items in random order.
There are 2 ways to do that in Swift.
One way is mutating the original array, and it’s using the shuffle()
method that shuffles the items in the array:
items.shuffle()
Note that I used var
because an array is a struct, and if I declare it as let
then it’s immutable, and you will get an error.
Another way is not mutating the original array, but it’s returning a new array, and it’s using the shuffled()
method:
let items = 1...3
let shuffledItems = items.shuffled()
Note that here I am safe to use let
to declare my variables because shuffled()
does not mutate the original array.
→ I wrote 17 books to help you become a better developer, download them all at $0 cost by joining my newsletter
→ JOIN MY CODING BOOTCAMP, an amazing cohort course that will be a huge step up in your coding career - covering React, Next.js - next edition February 2025