Ionic and covalent bonding

ionic bonding happens with a metal atom and a non-metal atom. the metal loses electrons to the non-metal.
covalent bonding happens between non-metal atoms, and the atoms share pairs of electrons.
hydrogen and chlorine are both non-metals so therefore it is a covalent bond
you should look up a dot and cross diagram to see how hydrogen and chlorine share a pair of electrons. they don't give away electrons since it's not an ionic bond

Hi guys,
I was revising for my yr10 chemistry mocks and in my textbook it says that hydrogen chloride is a covalent bond so I'm confused how this is the case bc I thought that hydrogen would lose that 1 electron and chlorine would gain it(so an ionic bond). So, if something like this was to come up, how would I know?
Thanks x

HCl is a weird one.
In pure form, it is covalent. A GCSE way of looking at it would be to argue that there is nonmetal to nonmetal bonding, which suggests it should probably be covalent.
When dissolved in water, however, it splits into H^+ and Cl^- ions.
So to clear up the ambiguity, “hydrogen chloride” generally refers to the pure thing, which is covalent and “hydrochloric acid” refers to aqueous solutions where it is dissociated into ions. Because the textbook has called it “hydrogen chloride” instead of “hydrochloric acid”, it is correct.