SwiftUI initialize array before use

I have an empty array of structures. I want to initialize it before I try to display it. I probably did something stupid. In my view I put an init. I ran the debugger and stopped at the append. Down in the debug area it said I had 0 values. That did not change and later when I went to display the data I got the fatal error that the index was out of range. I know when I created the array the 0 element was out of range, but I went through the init code in the, apparently fruitless, hope it would get initialized before it ran.

On another note. I am probably doing it wrong and would not be adverse to changing my code. What I want is an array with 6 elements created when I start the application. The structure that makes up the array does not require an initializer.

The array is a State variable because I am going to change the values for elements in it and when I change them I want a redraw. I am not going to change the number of elements, just data in the existing elements.

Edit: I seem to remember that I can put stuff in the app file that will be available to all. I would not have a problem moving my data there, but it seemed simpler to have it in the view that used it.

Another edit: I changed the definition of the array to create the elements and it apparently worked. That's fine, but it still puzzles me why init did not work. Probably going to run across the iagain.

struct Player {
  var name = ""
}
struct ContentView: View {
  @State private var players: [Player] = []
  init (){
    for _ in 0...5 {
      players.append(Player())
    }
  }
  
  var body: some View {
    HStack {
      TextField ("Player 1", text: $players[0].name)
    }
  }
}

Never use index subscripting in the body of a SwiftUI view on an empty array because any init method is called after the view in rendered the first time.

A safe swifty alternative to initialize the array is the init(repeating:count:) API

struct ContentView: View {
  @State private var players = Array(repeating: Player(), count: 6)
  
  var body: some View {
  ...

Init still works, but it doesn't behave as expected because in SwiftUI, the body property of a View is evaluated immediately. Therefore, attempting to access an element from an empty array will result in an 'Index out of range' error. <br>
To address this issue based on your code, you can make a slight modification as follows:

Direct initialization:

@State private var players: [Player] = {
    var array = [Player]()
    for _ in 0...5 {
        array.append(Player())
    }
    return array
}()

or:

@State private var players = Array(repeating: Player(), count: 6)

Indirect initialization:

@State private var players: [Player]

init() {
    var array = [Player]()
    for _ in 0...5 {
        array.append(Player())
    }
    _players = State(wrappedValue: array)
}

or

@State private var players: [Player]

init() {
    _players = State(initialValue: Array(repeating: Player(), count: 6))
}

The error appears to be that I can not update @State variables in the init. I pointed out in the original post that the count of entries, in the debugger, did not change as I added the entries. I removed the @State, and changed TextField to Text, and it worked like a champ. I had another test where I created the array with entries and in the init I tried to change one of them. The code ran with no errors, but the change did not show up. I removed the @State and it ran fine.

I found this on stack overflow