[swift-users] Why this string not work. Any and Optionals in dictionary

[Ole Begemann]

> I have a simple expression with Any and is not work. Why?
>
> vardictarray: [[String: Any]] = [["kek": nil]]
>
> \\ Nil is not compatible with expected dictionary value type 'Any'

`nil` is just a literal value that doesn't have a specific type. Even 
though you want to put it in a dictionary whose `Value` type is `Any`, 
you must first tell the compiler what type your `nil` value is: for 
example, is it an Optional<Int> or an Optional<String>? Or any other 
type that conforms to `ExpressibleByNilLiteral`, for that matter — `nil` 
is not confined to `Optional`.

This works:

var dictarray: [[String: Any]] = [["kek": nil as Int?]]

This compiles but the compiler raises a warning: "Expression implicitly 
coerced from 'Int?' to Any". To silence the warning you'd need to add 
another cast:

var dictarray: [[String: Any]] = [["kek": nil as Int? as Any]]