[swift-users] the pain of strings

[David Baraff]

I know, I’ve read tons about about this.  I sympathize.  Unicode, it’s all very complex.

But.

  BUT.

Python:
  shortID = longerDeviceID[-2:]		# give me the last two characters

Swift:
  let shortID = String(longerDeviceID.characters.dropFirst(longerDeviceID.characters.count - 2))

I can’t even read the above without my eyes glazing over.  As has been pointed out, an API which demands this much verbosity is crippling for many developers, to say the least.

With Swift 4, am I correct that it will be at least:

  let shortID = String(longerDeviceID.dropFirst(longerDeviceID.count - 2))