How to Shuffle an Array in Swift

This tutorial is part of the Swift series.

Suppose you have an array in Swift, like this:

var items = 1...3

and you want to shuffle the items in random order.

There are two ways to accomplish this in Swift.

One way is by using the shuffle() method, which shuffles the items in the array:

items.shuffle()

Note that the array is declared using var because arrays are structs and declaring it with let would make it immutable, resulting in an error.

Another way is by using the shuffled() method, which does not mutate the original array but instead returns a new shuffled array:

let items = 1...3
let shuffledItems = items.shuffled()

In this case, it is safe to declare the variables using let since the shuffled() method does not modify the original array.

Tags: swift, array shuffling, shuffle method.