Challenge: By default, Swift’s switch statement uses equality matching when testing Set instances (for example). So how can you switch that up to use containment instead of equality? For example, say you want to test a set of insets presented as Set<Inset>? Here’s the standard Swift solution for containment:

switch insets {
case let sides where sides.isSuperset(of: [.top, .bottom]) : ...
case let sides where sides.isSuperset(of: .top) : ...
case let sides where sides.isSuperset(of: .bottom) : ...
}

It’s not awful, but couldn’t there be a more beautiful way to allow pattern matching against a set using a more Swifty statement that didn’t abuse its where clause?

Solution: Olivier Halligon came up with the following approach. He built a custom Set containment struct whose pattern matching operator (~=) is customized to apply superset detection:

public struct SetContainmentMatcher<T: Hashable> {
    public let set: Set<T>
    
    public static func ~=(
        lhs: SetContainmentMatcher<T>, 
        rhs: Set<T>) -> Bool {
        return rhs.isSuperset(of: lhs.set)
    }
}

public func containing<T>(_ set: Set<T>) -> SetContainmentMatcher<T> {
    return SetContainmentMatcher(set: set)
}

To use, build your switch using the now-global containing function. The function enables you to test your set against other sets using standard switch pattern matching.

public enum Inset { case top, bottom, left, right }

let sides: Set<Inset> = [.top, .right]
switch sides {
case containing([.top, .bottom]):
    print("contains: top, bottom")
case containing([.top]):
    print("contains: top") // matches here
case containing([.bottom]):
    print("contains: bottom")
default:
    print("default case")
}

Nice, isn’t it? Make sure to test for the largest sets first. If you invert the logic here, testing [.top] before [.top, .bottom], you may end up with unexpected behavior.

More good reading here on Olivier’s blog.