make an array of arrays in swift

You can simply add the array inside of array like this [[Any]].

    var messageIntents = ["Send a message", "Send message", "Text", "Send text", "Send a text"]
    var weatherIntents = ["weather", "what's the weather", "how's the weather", "the weather"]
    var musicIntents = ["play", "i want to hear", "shuffle"]

Below an example of arrays inside of array placeholder.

    var arraysOfArray = [messageIntents, weatherIntents,musicIntents]

You can access object by each looping the index of an array

arraysOfArray[index]
arraysOnArray[0] //prints ["Send a message", "Send message", "Text", "Send text", "Send a text"]

or using 'for each' statement like this

for array in arraysOfArray{
    print(array)
   for dataObject in array{
    print(dataObject)
   }
 }

You can store your array of strings in an array as well. If your goal is to find a matching string within an array just use the contains function of Array.

var messageIntents = ["Send a message", "Send message", "Text", "Send text", "Send a text"]
var weatherIntents = ["weather", "what's the weather", "how's the weather", "the weather"]
var musicIntents = ["play", "i want to hear", "shuffle"]

let arrayOfArrays = [messageIntents, weatherIntents, musicIntents ]

let stringToFind = "weather"
for array in arrayOfArrays {
   if array.contains(stringToFind) {
      print("Found It")
      break
   }
}

My understanding is that, you intend to categorize a string. If you intend to directly compare them ( by direct compare i mean no transformation during checking like hasPrefix, hasSuffix, contains, toLowerCase, toUpperCase ), then using a dictionary is the fastest way.

To do it in a cleaner way first of all declare an enum for categories

enum IntentCategories {
    case message
    case weather
    case music
    case none
}

Then storing the string keys in dictionary like following

var intents [String: IntentCategories] = [
                                          "Send a message" :  IntentCategories.message,
                                          "Send message"   :  IntentCategories.message,
                                          "Text"           :  IntentCategories.message,
                                          "weather"        :  IntentCategories.weather
                 //... insert all the intents for message, hope you get my point                 
                ]

Then finding the string checking for particular intent category

switch intents[INPUT_STRING] {
    case message:
         print("Message type intent detected")
    case weather:
         print("weather type intent detected")
    case music:
         print("music type intent detected")
    case none:
         print("undefined intent detected")
}

This implementation will give you the fastest possible way to categorize your intent strings.

If you need transformation of existing intent before comparing, there is no quick way except linearly searching each intent strings.

Hope it helps.

You can use flatMap() to convert a 2D array into a 1D one, and check if that array contains the searched string:

[messageIntents, weatherIntents, musicIntents].flatMap { $0 }.contains(searchedString)

Or, you can use contains(where:) over the 2D array, and contains() on the inner arrays:

[messageIntents, weatherIntents, musicIntents].contains { $0.contains(searchedString) }