What’s the difference be...

In Swift, Any and AnyObject are used to represent values of unknown types, but they serve different purposes and have distinct characteristics.

Any

• Definition: Any is the most general type in Swift and can represent any type, including value types (such as structs and enums) and reference types (such as classes and protocols).
• Usage: It is used when you need to work with a mix of different types or when the type of a value is not known at compile-time.
• Example: You can create a heterogeneous array that holds different types of values:
  swift Copy

  let mixedArray: [Any] = ["Hello", 42, 3.14]

  To access the values, you need to cast them back to their original types:
  swift Copy

  if let firstValue = mixedArray[0] as? String {
      print(firstValue) // "Hello"
  }
  if let secondValue = mixedArray[1] as? Int {
      print(secondValue) // 42
  }

AnyObject

• Definition: AnyObject is a protocol to which all classes implicitly conform. It can only represent reference types (instances of classes).
• Usage: It is often used when working with Objective-C APIs that use id or NSObject as a generic type. It is also useful when you want to restrict a protocol to be implemented by classes only.
• Example: You can create an array that holds instances of different classes:
  swift Copy

  let imageView = UIImageView(image: nil)
  let viewController = UIViewController(nibName: nil, bundle: nil)
  let mixedArray: [AnyObject] = [imageView, viewController]
  `...