Swift Basic Data Types & Type Inference

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Last Updated on March 13, 2022 by Deya Eldeen

Swift is strongly typed, data should either be explicitly assigned or inferred, the main basic data types that come with swift are

Type	Description
Character	a 16-bit Unicode character like “a” or “/”
String	represents textual data like “Hello”
Float	represents 32-bit floating-point number
Double	represents 64-bit floating-point number
Bool	logical value: true or false
Tuples	groups multiple values in single value
Int	integer, a whole number
UInt	unsigned integer, a whole number
Int8	1 byte integer
Int32	4 bytes integer
Int64	8 bytes integer
UInt8	1 byte unsigned integer
UInt32	4 bytes unsigned integer
UInt64	8 bytes unsigned integer

On a 32-bit device, Int has the size of Int32, on 64-bit devices, Int has the size of Int64, same goes for UInt.

Swift has a feature where it can infer the type of the data directly, for example the variable level here is infered to be an Int

var level = 12

you can explicitly determine the type directly

var level: Int = 17

Extra Tip: A CGFloat holds either 32-bits of data or 64-bits of data depending on the CPU Architecture.