What is the relevance of this String format specifier? - swift

Question

I'm trying to get an understanding of some code I came across recently.
In an answer to a question here https://stackoverflow.com/a/51173170/1162328, the author made use of a String with a format specifier when looping over files in the documentDirectory. Can anyone shed some light on what %#/%# is actually doing?
for fileName in fileNames {
let tempPath = String(format: "%#/%#", path, fileName)
// Check for specific file which you don't want to delete. For me .sqlite files
if !tempPath.contains(".sql") {
try fileManager.removeItem(atPath: tempPath)
}
}
Reading the Apple documentation archive for Formatting Basics I came across this:
In format strings, a ‘%’ character announces a placeholder for a value, with the characters that follow determining the kind of value expected and how to format it. For example, a format string of "%d houses" expects an integer value to be substituted for the format expression '%d'. NSString supports the format characters defined for the ANSI C functionprintf(), plus ‘#’ for any object.
What exactly then, is %#/%# doing?

Answer 1

Each format specifier is replaced by one of the following arguments (usually in the same order, although that can be controlled with positional arguments). So in your case, the first %# is replaced by path and the second %# is replaced by fileName. Example:
let path = "/path/to/dir"
let fileName = "foo.txt"
let tempPath = String(format: "%#/%#", path, fileName)
print(tempPath) // /path/to/dir/foo.txt
The preferred way to build file names and paths is to use the corresponding URL methods instead of string manipulation. Example:
let pathURL = URL(fileURLWithPath: path)
let tempURL = pathURL.appendingPathComponent(fileName)
if tempURL.pathExtension != "sql" {
try FileManager.default.removeItem(at: tempURL)
}

Answer 2

%# is something similar to %d or anything like that. This is the way of string interpolation in Swift.
To be exact %# is placeholder for object - used in Objective-C A LOT. Since NSString * was object (now it is only String), it was used to insert NSString * into another NSString *.
Also given code is just rewritten objective-c code which was something like
NSString *tempPath = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/%#", path, filename];
which can be rewritten in swift:
let tempPath = path + "/" + fileName
Also, given path = "Test" and fileName = "great" will give output Test/great.
One more note: %# is as good as dangerous. You can put UITableView as well as String in it. It will use description property for inserting into string.