Allow Swift code to dynamically create and use names for classes and functions

Originator:mail
Number:rdar://17318591 Date Originated:2014-06-15
Status:Open Resolved:
Product:Developer Tools Product Version:Xcode 6 beta 1
Classification:Feature Request Reproducible:
 
Currently Swift lets you create variables having the Selector type, which is really just a string, but you cannot do anything with it from within Swift.

Specifically, I'm looking to do the following:

var f = "myFunctionName"
f()  // call the function named myFunctionName

var c = "myClassName"
var instance = c()   // create an instance of class myClassName

var p = "myPropertyName"
c.p  // access the property called myPropertyName

This allows the code to read the name of the class or function from a database table, for example, and determine at runtime which class to instantiate and/or function to call.

Even PHP allows for this. ;-)

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