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# Mirror

A representation of the substructure and display style of an instance of
any type.

```
struct Mirror
```

## Overview

A mirror describes the parts that make up a particular instance, such as
the instance’s stored properties, collection or tuple elements, or its
active enumeration case. Mirrors also provide a “display style” property
that suggests how this mirror might be rendered.

Playgrounds and the debugger use the `Mirror` type to display
representations of values of any type. For example, when you pass an
instance to the `dump(_:_:_:_:)` function, a mirror is used to render that
instance’s runtime contents.

```
struct Point {
    let x: Int, y: Int
}

let p = Point(x: 21, y: 30)
print(String(reflecting: p))
// Prints "▿ Point
//           - x: 21
//           - y: 30"
```

To customize the mirror representation of a custom type, add conformance to
the `CustomReflectable` protocol.

## Topics

### Querying Descendants

[`descendant(_:_:)`](/documentation/Swift/Mirror/descendant(_:_:))

Returns a specific descendant of the reflected subject, or `nil` if no
such descendant exists.

[`MirrorPath`](/documentation/Swift/MirrorPath)

A protocol for legitimate arguments to `Mirror`’s `descendant`
method.


---

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