Prior to Swift 1.2, the as operator could be used to carry out two different kinds of conversion, depending on the type of expression being converted and the type it was being converted to:

  • Guaranteed conversion of a value of one type to another, whose success can be verified by the Swift compiler. For example, upcasting (i.e., converting from a class to one of its superclasses) or specifying the type of a literal expression, (e.g., 1 as Float).
  • Forced conversion of one value to another, whose safety cannot be guaranteed by the Swift compiler and which may cause a runtime trap. For example downcasting, converting from a class to one of its subclasses.

https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/?id=23

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