Foundation likes to pass optional errors (versus, say, a unified Result type) to completion handlers. A typical closure uses a (Value?, Error?) -> Void signature,where Value is some sort of data result that varies by operation.

A colleague was struggling to use conditional binding along with casting in his handler. Leaving aside for the moment any rational need to cast to NSError, this is an interesting demonstration of how you perform these two operations synchronously in code.

A cast from Error to NSError is guaranteed to succeed, so you can use the as operator. However, you must phrase the cast just right. Otherwise the Swift compiler emits warnings, as you see in the following screenshot. Here is an example of how you don’t get this job done properly:

As my friend complained in frustration: “But it tells me “did I mean as” and when I switch `as?` to `as` then it complains that error is Error? and isn’t convertible to NSError.”

This attempt followed the normal pattern of conditional casting. Swift automatically lifts double optionals into a single optional result when used this way, but the cast from Error to NSError will always succeed, so you can’t use as? here.

To resolve, use a non-conditional cast to NSError? and then perform conditional binding to unwrap the value:

enum Bad: Error { case luck }

let error: Bad? = Bad.luck

if let error = (error as NSError?) {
    print("Worked")
}

The parens around the non-conditional cast make all the difference. Swift removes its warnings and makes everything work as expected.