code involving indexPath & NSIndexPath works - but why is it redundant?

Question

I'm getting back to using CloudKit and in the project I'm revisiting, I have a query fetch performed and I am left with an array of CKRecords. I'm setting this array to be displayed via TableController. Anyways, I have this one line of code (which works)... but I am just unsure why I am setting the indexPath as NSIndexPath.

 override func tableView(_ tableView: UITableView, cellForRowAt indexPath: IndexPath) -> UITableViewCell {
    let cell = tableView.dequeueReusableCell(withIdentifier: "dining") as! table1cell
    let restaurant: CKRecord = categories[(indexPath as NSIndexPath).row]
    cell.Name.text = restaurant.value(forKey: "Name") as? String

    return cell

With my other non-CKRecord TableController projects, I know I don't have to set the indexPath to itself, in essence. What am I missing here?

Answer 1

The use of the cast to NSIndexPath is pointless. Simply change the line to:

let restaurant: CKRecord = categories[indexPath.row]

Answer 2

If indexPath is not stored in an explicitly typed var, you probably casted it to avoid a compiler message. If the compiler does not know indexPath is of type NSIndexPath, accessing the .row property would likely cause an error.

Where are you declaring/storing indexPath? What happens when you remove the as NSIndexPath cast?

Edit: re-reading your question, I believe the answer is:

"You are not storing indexPath as itself, you are casting whatever is stored in indexPath to be of type NSIndexPath"