Introduction to classes and structs in Swift

Structures and classes in Swift serve as fundamental constructs for data storage and behavior modeling, offering developers flexibility in their usage. Both classes and structs can define properties, initializers, subscripts, and support protocol conformance, providing similarities that allow for interchangeability. However, they differ in significant ways: classes can inherit properties and methods from other classes, enabling type casting and supporting mutable instances due to their reference type nature, whereas structs are immutable value types. Syntax for defining both is similar, using keywords followed by PascalCase naming, but their behaviors diverge when instances are created. Classes involve reference type behavior, meaning changes to one instance affect all references to it, while structs create independent copies. The choice between using classes or structs depends on the need for inheritance, memory efficiency, and whether an object’s identity needs control, with Apple documentation generally recommending structs for safer use in a multithreaded environment.