or statement || not working with swift 2

The || or operator works fine in Swift 2, but both arguments have be of the type Bool (more precisely: implement the protocol BooleanValue). Do you have any example that doesn't work the way you expect?

I'm confused because they are all strings.

answer1 = "b"

answer2 = "a"

select1 = "a"

if select1 == answer1 || answer2 {

You'll have to write it like this:

if select1 == answer1 || select1 == answer2 {

If you really want that functionality, you can define it yourself. You could use "|", but since it is already taken for integers, I have used "||" in this Perl 6 inspired junction implementation.

protocol Junctionable : Hashable {}
struct OrJunction<T : Junctionable> {
    let values : Set<T>
   
    init(values: [T]) {
        self.values = Set(values)
    }
}
func ||<T : Junctionable>(lhs: T, rhs: T) -> OrJunction<T> {
    return OrJunction<T>(values: [lhs, rhs])
}
infix operator ~~ {}
func ~~<T : Junctionable>(lhs: T, rhs: OrJunction<T>) -> Bool {
    return rhs.values.contains(lhs)
}
extension String : Junctionable {}
let answer1 = "b"
let answer2 = "a"
let select1 = "a"
if select1 ~~ answer1 || answer2 {
    print("select1 was among the values")
}