swiftoptimizationinline-functions

Is there a way to declare an inline function in Swift?


I'm very new to the Swift language.

I wanted to declare an inline function just like in C++ so my func declaration looks like this:

func MyFunction(param: Int) -> Int {
    ...
}

and I want to do something like this:

inline func MyFunction(param: Int) -> Int {
    ...
}

I tried to search on the web but I didn't find anything relevant maybe there is no inline keyword but maybe there is another way to inline the function in Swift.


Solution

  • Swift 1.2 will include the @inline attribute, with never and __always as parameters. For more info, see here.

    As stated before, you rarely need to declare a function explicitly as @inline(__always) because Swift is fairly smart as to when to inline a function. Not having a function inlined, however, can be necessary in some code.

    Swift-5 added the @inlinable attribute, which helps ensuring that library/framework stuff are inlineable for those that link to your library. Make sure you read up about it, as there may be a couple of gotchas that might make it unusable. It's also only for functions/methods declared public, as it's meant for libraries wanting to expose inline stuff.