Convert Array<String> to String then back to Array<String> - arrays

Question

say I have a variable
let stringArray = "[\"You\", \"Shall\", \"Not\", \"PASS!\"]"
// if I show this, it would look like this
print(stringArray)
["You", "Shall", "Not", "PASS!"]
now let's have an Array< String>
let array = ["You", "Shall", "Not", "PASS!"]
// if I convert this into string
// it would roughly be equal to the variable 'stringArray'
if String(array) == stringArray {
print("true")
} else {
print("false")
}
// output would be
true
now say what should I do to convert variable 'stringArray' to 'Array< String>'

Answer 1

The answer would be to convert the string using NSJSONSerialization
Thanks Vadian for that tip
let dataString = stringArray.dataUsingEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding)
let newArray = try! NSJSONSerialization.JSONObjectWithData(dataString!, options: []) as! Array<String>
for string in newArray {
print(string)
}
voila there you have it, it's now an array of strings

Answer 2

A small improvement for Swift 4.
Try this:
// Array of Strings
let array: [String] = ["red", "green", "blue"]
let arrayAsString: String = array.description
let stringAsData = arrayAsString.data(using: String.Encoding.utf16)
let arrayBack: [String] = try! JSONDecoder().decode([String].self, from: stringAsData!)
For other data types respectively:
// Set of Doubles
let set: Set<Double> = [1, 2.0, 3]
let setAsString: String = set.description
let setStringAsData = setAsString.data(using: String.Encoding.utf16)
let setBack: Set<Double> = try! JSONDecoder().decode(Set<Double>.self, from: setStringAsData!)