We also have the option of creating dictionaries that are initialized with elements. In a dictionary, an element refers to a single key-value pair.

To create a populated dictionary, we will use dictionary literal syntax. A dictionary literal is a collection of comma-separated key-value pairs.

The syntax to create a populated dictionary looks like this:

var dictionaryName: [KeyType: ValueType] = [
  Key1: Value1,
  Key2: Value2,
  Key3: Value3
]

• There is a type annotation for both the key and the value.
• Each key is unique.
• The keys and values must belong to their specified type.
• The key and the value are separated by a colon :.
• All of the elements are contained within brackets [].
• Each key-value pair is separated by a comma ,.

Let’s create a dictionary called fruitStand that stores information about fruit stock:

var fruitStand: [String: Int] = [
  "Apples": 12,
  "Bananas": 20
]

• The keys are type String and the values are type Int.
• There are two key-value pairs in our dictionary.
• One pair has a key of "Apples" with a value of 12.
• The other pair has a key of "Bananas" and a value of 20.

If we use print() to output the value of fruitStand, we could get the following result:

["Bananas": 20, "Apples": 12]

Dictionaries are unordered- when we use print() to output a dictionary, the order of the elements may not appear in the order they were added in.