I am new in Rust but I know a little bit a Python, and I have questions.
Why does the code below work without any exceptions:
fn main() {
let s1 = String::from("hello");
let repeated_str = s1.repeat(4);
println!("{}",repeated_str);
}
s1 variable is not mutable. But we mutate s1 using the repeat() method right? So why we can create a new variable using s1?
Maybe I didn't understand something when I read about ownership and reference.
The str::repeat function does not actually mutate the given value, it only copies it. Hence, you are able to call the function without s1 having the mut modifier.
This is explained in the docs for repeat with the following line:
Creates a new String by repeating a string n times.
Related
I'm writing my first rust program and as expected I'm having problems making the borrow checker happy. Here is what I'm trying to do:
I would like to have a function that allocates some array, stores the array in some global data structure, and returns a reference to it. Example:
static mut global_data = ...
fn f() -> &str {
let s = String::new();
global.my_string = s;
return &s;
};
Is there any way to make something like this work? If not, what is "the rust way"(tm) to get an array and a pointer into it?
Alternatively, is there any documentation I could read? The rust book is unfortunately very superficial on most topics.
There are a couple things wrong with your code:
Using global state is very unidiomatic in rust. It can be done in some specific scenarios, but it should never be a go to method. You cold try wrapping your state in Rc or Arc and share it this way in your program. If you also want to mutate this state (as you show in your example) you must to wrap it also in some kind of interior mutability type. So try Rc<RefCell<State>> if you want to use state in only one thread or Arc<Mutex<State>> if you want to use it from multiple different threads.
Accessing mutable static memory is unsafe. So even the following code won't compile:
static mut x: i32 = 0;
// neither of this lines work!
println!("{}", x);
x = 42;
You must use unsafe to access or modify any static mutable variables, because you must de facto prove to the compiler that you assure it that no data races (from accessing this data from different threads) will occur.
I can't be sure, since you didn't show what type is global_data, but I assume, that my_string is a field of type String. When you write
let s = String::new();
global.my_string = s;
You move ownership of that string to the global. You therefore cannot return (or even create) reference to it. You must do this though it's new owner. &global.my_string could work, but not if you do what I written in 1. You could try to return RefMut of MutexGuard, but that is probably not what you want.
Okay, just in case someone else is having the same question, the following code seems to work:
struct foo {
b : Option<Box<u32>>,
}
static mut global : foo = foo { b : None };
fn f<'a>() -> &'a u32 {
let b : Box<u32> = Box::new(5);
unsafe {
global.b = Some(b);
match &global.b {
None => panic!(""),
Some(a) => return &a,
}
}
}
At least it compiles. Hopefully it will also do the right thing when run.
I'm aware that this is not how you are supposed to do things in rust. But I'm currently trying to figure out how to implement various data structures from scratch, and the above is just a reduced example of one of the problems I encountered.
I set myself a little task to acquire some basic Rust knowledge. The task was:
Read some key-value pairs from stdin and put them into a hashmap.
This, however, turned out to be a trickier challenge than expected. Mainly due to the understanding of lifetimes. The following code is what I currently have after a few experiments, but the compiler just doesn't stop yelling at me.
use std::io;
use std::collections::HashMap;
fn main() {
let mut input = io::stdin();
let mut lock = input.lock();
let mut lines_iter = lock.lines();
let mut map = HashMap::new();
for line in lines_iter {
let text = line.ok().unwrap();
let kv_pair: Vec<&str> = text.words().take(2).collect();
map.insert(kv_pair[0], kv_pair[1]);
}
println!("{}", map.len());
}
The compiler basically says:
`text` does not live long enough
As far as I understand, this is because the lifetime of 'text' is limited to the scope of the loop.
The key-value pair that I'm extracting within the loop is therefore also bound to the loops boundaries. Thus, inserting them to the outer map would lead to a dangling pointer since 'text' will be destroyed after each iteration. (Please tell me if I'm wrong)
The big question is: How to solve this issue?
My intuition says:
Make an "owned copy" of the key value pair and "expand" it's lifetime to the outer scope .... but I have no idea how to achieve this.
The lifetime of 'text' is limited to the scope of the loop. The key-value pair that I'm extracting within the loop is therefore also bound to the loops boundaries. Thus, inserting them to the outer map would lead to an dangling pointer since 'text' will be destroyed after each iteration.
Sounds right to me.
Make an "owned copy" of the key value pair.
An owned &str is a String:
map.insert(kv_pair[0].to_string(), kv_pair[1].to_string());
Edit
The original code is below, but I've updated the answer above to be more idiomatic
map.insert(String::from_str(kv_pair[0]), String::from_str(kv_pair[1]));
In Rust 1.1 the function words was marked as deprecated. Now you should use split_whitespace.
Here is an alternative solution which is a bit more functional and idiomatic (works with 1.3).
use std::io::{self, BufRead};
use std::collections::HashMap;
fn main() {
let stdin = io::stdin();
// iterate over all lines, "change" the lines and collect into `HashMap`
let map: HashMap<_, _> = stdin.lock().lines().filter_map(|line_res| {
// convert `Result` to `Option` and map the `Some`-value to a pair of
// `String`s
line_res.ok().map(|line| {
let kv: Vec<_> = line.split_whitespace().take(2).collect();
(kv[0].to_owned(), kv[1].to_owned())
})
}).collect();
println!("{}", map.len());
}
I set myself a little task to acquire some basic Rust knowledge. The task was:
Read some key-value pairs from stdin and put them into a hashmap.
This, however, turned out to be a trickier challenge than expected. Mainly due to the understanding of lifetimes. The following code is what I currently have after a few experiments, but the compiler just doesn't stop yelling at me.
use std::io;
use std::collections::HashMap;
fn main() {
let mut input = io::stdin();
let mut lock = input.lock();
let mut lines_iter = lock.lines();
let mut map = HashMap::new();
for line in lines_iter {
let text = line.ok().unwrap();
let kv_pair: Vec<&str> = text.words().take(2).collect();
map.insert(kv_pair[0], kv_pair[1]);
}
println!("{}", map.len());
}
The compiler basically says:
`text` does not live long enough
As far as I understand, this is because the lifetime of 'text' is limited to the scope of the loop.
The key-value pair that I'm extracting within the loop is therefore also bound to the loops boundaries. Thus, inserting them to the outer map would lead to a dangling pointer since 'text' will be destroyed after each iteration. (Please tell me if I'm wrong)
The big question is: How to solve this issue?
My intuition says:
Make an "owned copy" of the key value pair and "expand" it's lifetime to the outer scope .... but I have no idea how to achieve this.
The lifetime of 'text' is limited to the scope of the loop. The key-value pair that I'm extracting within the loop is therefore also bound to the loops boundaries. Thus, inserting them to the outer map would lead to an dangling pointer since 'text' will be destroyed after each iteration.
Sounds right to me.
Make an "owned copy" of the key value pair.
An owned &str is a String:
map.insert(kv_pair[0].to_string(), kv_pair[1].to_string());
Edit
The original code is below, but I've updated the answer above to be more idiomatic
map.insert(String::from_str(kv_pair[0]), String::from_str(kv_pair[1]));
In Rust 1.1 the function words was marked as deprecated. Now you should use split_whitespace.
Here is an alternative solution which is a bit more functional and idiomatic (works with 1.3).
use std::io::{self, BufRead};
use std::collections::HashMap;
fn main() {
let stdin = io::stdin();
// iterate over all lines, "change" the lines and collect into `HashMap`
let map: HashMap<_, _> = stdin.lock().lines().filter_map(|line_res| {
// convert `Result` to `Option` and map the `Some`-value to a pair of
// `String`s
line_res.ok().map(|line| {
let kv: Vec<_> = line.split_whitespace().take(2).collect();
(kv[0].to_owned(), kv[1].to_owned())
})
}).collect();
println!("{}", map.len());
}
I'm having trouble combining two strings, I'm very new to rust so If there is an easier way to do this please feel free to show me.
My function loops through a vector of string tuples (String,String), what I want to do is be able to combine these two strings elements into one string. Here's what I have:
for tup in bmp.bitmap_picture.mut_iter() {
let &(ref x, ref y) = tup;
let res_string = x;
res_string.append(y.as_slice());
}
but I receive the error : error: cannot move out of dereference of '&'-pointer for the line: res_string.append(y.as_slice());
I also tried res_string.append(y.clone().as_slice()); but the exact same error happened, so I'm not sure if that was even right to do.
The function definition of append is:
fn append(self, second: &str) -> String
The plain self indicates by-value semantics. By-value moves the receiver into the method, unless the receiver implements Copy (which String does not). So you have to clone the x rather than the y.
If you want to move out of a vector, you have to use move_iter.
There are a few other improvements possible as well:
let string_pairs = vec![("Foo".to_string(),"Bar".to_string())];
// Option 1: leave original vector intact
let mut strings = Vec::new();
for &(ref x, ref y) in string_pairs.iter() {
let string = x.clone().append(y.as_slice());
strings.push(string);
}
// Option 2: consume original vector
let strings: Vec<String> = string_pairs.move_iter()
.map(|(x, y)| x.append(y.as_slice()))
.collect();
It seems like you might be confusing append, which takes the receiver by value and returns itself, with push_str, which simply mutates the receiver (passed by mutable reference) as you seem to expect. So the simplest fix to your example is to change append to push_str. You'll also need to change "ref x" to "ref mut x" so it can be mutated.
This is for the current 0.6 Rust trunk by the way, not sure the exact commit.
Let's say I want to for each over some strings, and my closure takes a borrowed string pointer argument (&str). I want my closure to add its argument to an owned vector of owned strings ~[~str] to be returned. My understanding of Rust is weak, but I think that strings are a special case where you can't dereference them with * right? How do I get my strings from &str into the vector's push method which takes a ~str?
Here's some code that doesn't compile
fn read_all_lines() -> ~[~str] {
let mut result = ~[];
let reader = io::stdin();
let util = #reader as #io::ReaderUtil;
for util.each_line |line| {
result.push(line);
}
result
}
It doesn't compile because it's inferring result's type to be [&str] since that's what I'm pushing onto it. Not to mention its lifetime will be wrong since I'm adding a shorter-lived variable to it.
I realize I could use ReaderUtil's read_line() method which returns a ~str. But this is just an example.
So, how do I get an owned string from a borrowed string? Or am I totally misunderstanding.
You should call the StrSlice trait's method, to_owned, as in:
fn read_all_lines() -> ~[~str] {
let mut result = ~[];
let reader = io::stdin();
let util = #reader as #io::ReaderUtil;
for util.each_line |line| {
result.push(line.to_owned());
}
result
}
StrSlice trait docs are here:
http://static.rust-lang.org/doc/core/str.html#trait-strslice
You can't.
For one, it doesn't work semantically: a ~str promises that only one thing owns it at a time. But a &str is borrowed, so what happens to the place you borrowed from? It has no way of knowing that you're trying to steal away its only reference, and it would be pretty rude to trash the caller's data out from under it besides.
For another, it doesn't work logically: ~-pointers and #-pointers are allocated in completely different heaps, and a & doesn't know which heap, so it can't be converted to ~ and still guarantee that the underlying data lives in the right place.
So you can either use read_line or make a copy, which I'm... not quite sure how to do :)
I do wonder why the API is like this, when & is the most restricted of the pointers. ~ should work just as well here; it's not like the iterated strings already exist somewhere else and need to be borrowed.
At first I thought it was possible to use copy line to create owning pointer from the borrowed pointer to the string but this apparently copies burrowed pointer.
So I found str::from_slice(s: &str) -> ~str. This is probably what you need.