Handling Index Out of Range Exception the Swift Way

In this article you will learn how to treat index out of range exception in Swift arrays and other collections.

Problem Statement

The array is probably the most widely used data structure in Swift. It organizes data in a way that each component can be picked at random and is quickly accessible. To be able to mark an individual element, an index is introduced. Index must be an integer between 0 and n-1, where n is the number of elements and the size of the array.

If index does not satisfy the aforementioned condition, the notorious out of bounds or index out of range exception is raised and the program crashes. I would conjecture that it is among the most frequent error causes in Swift programs.

In this article we will see how to safeguard Swift arrays and other collections to eliminate this kind of error.

Handling Index Out of Range Exception

Here is a trivial use case that demonstrates the problem:

let array = [0, 1, 2]
let index = 3
print(array[3]) // Fatal error: Index out of range

Since array does not have an element under index 3, the above code leads to the index out of range exception and crash. It can be visualized as follows:

By adding a small sanity check we can eliminate this error:

if index >= 0 && index < array.count {
    print(array[index])
}

Although the crash has been fixed, it does not seem like a decent solution. Indeed, the code looks ugly and it should be repeated every time an array element is accessed. We can do it better.

Let’s implement an Array extension that returns an element by its index and does bounds check:

extension Array {
    func getElement(at index: Int) -> Element? {
        let isValidIndex = index >= 0 && index < count
        return isValidIndex ? self[index] : nil
    }
}

Although it does the job, the API still does not feel Swifty. We can improve its readability by means of subscripts.

Overloading Subscript

Subscripts provide shortcuts to access elements in an array or other collection. The default subscript raises an exception when an index appears to be out of valid range. Let’s overload it to return an optional element instead.

extension Array {
    subscript(safe index: Index) -> Element? {
        let isValidIndex = index >= 0 && index < count
        return isValidIndex ? self[index] : nil
    }
}

Although the syntax is now concise, what about the other collections, like Range, where elements are also frequently accessed by their index? Let’s implement a universal subscript agnostic of any concrete collection type:

extension Collection {
    subscript(safe index: Index) -> Element? {
        return indices.contains(index) ? self[index] : nil
    }
}

Now it can be applied universally across different collections:

[1, 2, 3][safe: 4] // Array - prints 'nil'
(0..<3)[safe: 4] // Range - prints 'nil'

Summary

Index out of range exception is a common source of crashes in Swift projects, thus handling it properly and concisely is highly important.

We have investigated vast range of solutions, starting from a naive and non-reusable one. The final implementation overloads a subscript and is common for all Swift collections that use integer index, such as arrays and ranges.