I am reading raw data from a file and I want to convert it to an integer:
fn main() {
let buf: &[u8] = &[0, 0, 0, 1];
let num = slice_to_i8(buf);
println!("1 == {}", num);
}
pub fn slice_to_i8(buf: &[u8]) -> i32 {
unimplemented!("what should I do here?")
}
I would do a cast in C, but what do I do in Rust?
I'd suggest using the byteorder crate (which also works in a no-std environment):
use byteorder::{BigEndian, ReadBytesExt}; // 1.2.7
fn main() {
let mut buf: &[u8] = &[0, 0, 0, 1];
let num = buf.read_u32::<BigEndian>().unwrap();
assert_eq!(1, num);
}
This handles oddly-sized slices and automatically advances the buffer so you can read multiple values.
As of Rust 1.32, you can also use the from_le_bytes / from_be_bytes / from_ne_bytes inherent methods on integers:
fn main() {
let buf = [0, 0, 0, 1];
let num = u32::from_be_bytes(buf);
assert_eq!(1, num);
}
These methods only handle fixed-length arrays to avoid dealing with the error when not enough data is present. If you have a slice, you will need to convert it into an array.
See also:
How to get a slice as an array in Rust?
How to convert a slice into an array reference?
I'd like to give this answer here to commit the following additional details:
A working code snippet which converts slice to integer (two ways to do it).
A working solution in no_std environment.
To keep everything in one place for the people getting here from the search engine.
Without external crates, the following methods are suitable to convert from slices to integer even for no_std build starting from Rust 1.32:
Method 1 (try_into + from_be_bytes)
use core::convert::TryInto;
let src = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7];
// 0x03040506
u32::from_be_bytes(src[2..6].try_into().unwrap());
use core::conver::TryInto is for no_std build. And the way to use the standard crate is the following: use std::convert::TryInto;.
(And about endians it has been already answered, but let me keep it here in one place: from_le_bytes, from_be_bytes, and from_ne_bytes - use them depending on how integer is represented in memory).
Method 2 (clone_from_slice + from_be_bytes)
let src = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7];
let mut dst = [0u8; 4];
dst.clone_from_slice(&src[2..6]);
// 0x03040506
u32::from_be_bytes(dst);
Result
In both cases integer will be equal to 0x03040506.
This custom serialize_deserialize_u8_i32 library will safely convert back and forth between u8 array and i32 array i.e. the serialise function will take all of your u8 values and pack them into i32 values and the deserialise function will take this library’s custom i32 values and convert them back to the original u8 values that you started with.
This was built for a specific purpose, however it may come in handy for other uses; depending on whether you want/need a fast/custom converter like this.
https://github.com/second-state/serialize_deserialize_u8_i32
Here’s my implementation (for a different use case) that discards any additional bytes beyond 8 (and therefore doesn’t need to panic if not exact):
pub fn u64_from_slice(slice: &[u8]) -> u64 {
u64::from_ne_bytes(slice.split_at(8).0.try_into().unwrap())
}
The split_at() method returns a tuple of two slices: one from index 0 until the specified index and the other from the specified index until the end. So by using .0 to access the first member of the tuple returned by .split_at(8), it ensures that only the first 8 bytes are passed to u64::to_ne_bytes(), discarding the leftovers. Then, of course, it calls the try_into method on that .0 tuple member, and .unwrap() since split_at does all the custom panicking for you.
Related
Is there an idiomatic way of initialising arrays in Rust. I'm creating an array of random numbers and was wondering if there is a more idiomatic way then just doing a for loop. My current code works fine, but seems more like C than proper Rust:
let mut my_array: [u64; 8] = [0; 8];
for i in 0..my_array.len() {
my_array[i] = some_function();
}
Various sized arrays can be directly randomly generated:
use rand; // 0.7.3
fn main() {
let my_array: [u64; 8] = rand::random();
println!("{:?}", my_array);
}
Currently, this only works for arrays of size from 0 to 32 (inclusive). Beyond that, you will want to see related questions:
How can I initialize an array using a function?
What is the proper way to initialize a fixed length array?
The other solution is nice and short, but does not apply to the case where you need to initialize an array of random numbers in a specific range. So, here's an answer that addresses that case.
use rand::{thread_rng, Rng};
fn main() {
let a = [(); 8].map(|_| thread_rng().gen_range(0.0..1.0));
println!("The array of random float numbers between 0.0 and 1.0 is: {:?}", a);
}
I would be happy to know if there's a better (shorter and more efficient) solution than this one.
As the title reads, how would I go about doing this?
fn foo(array: &[u32; 10]) -> &[u32; 5] {
&array[0..5]
}
Compiler error
error[E0308]: mismatched types
--> src/main.rs:2:5
|
2 | &array[0..5]
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^ expected array of 5 elements, found slice
|
= note: expected type `&[u32; 5]`
= note: found type `&[u32]`
arrayref implements a safe interface for doing this operation, using macros (and compile-time constant slicing bounds, of course).
Their readme explains
The goal of arrayref is to enable the effective use of APIs that involve array references rather than slices, for situations where parameters must have a given size.
and
let addr: &[u8; 16] = ...;
let mut segments = [0u16; 8];
// array-based API with arrayref
for i in 0 .. 8 {
segments[i] = read_u16_array(array_ref![addr,2*i,2]);
}
Here the array_ref![addr,2*i,2] macro allows us to take an array reference to a slice consisting of two bytes starting at 2*i. Apart from the syntax (less nice than slicing), it is essentially the same as the slice approach. However, this code makes explicit the need for precisely two bytes both in the caller, and in the function signature.
Stable Rust
It's not possible to do this using only safe Rust. To understand why, it's important to understand how these types are implemented. An array is guaranteed to have N initialized elements. It cannot get smaller or larger. At compile time, those guarantees allow the size aspect of the array to be removed, and the array only takes up N * sizeof(element) space.
That means that [T; N] and [T; M] are different types (when N != M) and you cannot convert a reference of one to the other.
The idiomatic solution is to use a slice instead:
fn foo(array: &[u32; 10]) -> &[u32] {
&array[0..5]
}
A slice contains a pointer to the data and the length of the data, thus moving that logic from compile time to run time.
Nightly Rust
You can perform a runtime check that the slice is the correct length and convert it to an array in one step:
#![feature(try_from)]
use std::convert::TryInto;
fn foo(array: &[u32; 10]) -> &[u32; 5] {
array[0..5].try_into().unwrap()
}
fn main() {}
Unsafe Rust
Because someone might want to do this the unsafe way in an earlier version of Rust, I'll present code based on the standard library implementation:
fn foo(array: &[u32; 10]) -> &[u32; 5] {
let slice = &array[0..5];
if slice.len() == 5 {
let ptr = slice.as_ptr() as *const [u32; 5];
unsafe { &*ptr }
} else {
panic!("Needs to be length 5")
}
}
fn main() {
let input = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9];
let output = foo(&input);
println!("{:?}", output);
}
In this code:
fn unpack_u32(data: &[u8]) -> u32 {
assert_eq!(data.len(), 4);
let res = data[0] as u32 |
(data[1] as u32) << 8 |
(data[2] as u32) << 16 |
(data[3] as u32) << 24;
res
}
fn main() {
let v = vec![0_u8, 1_u8, 2_u8, 3_u8, 4_u8, 5_u8, 6_u8, 7_u8, 8_u8];
println!("res: {:X}", unpack_u32(&v[1..5]));
}
the function unpack_u32 accepts only slices of length 4. Is there any way to replace the runtime check assert_eq with a compile time check?
Yes, kind of. The first step is easy: change the argument type from &[u8] to [u8; 4]:
fn unpack_u32(data: [u8; 4]) -> u32 { ... }
But transforming a slice (like &v[1..5]) into an object of type [u8; 4] is hard. You can of course create such an array simply by specifying all elements, like so:
unpack_u32([v[1], v[2], v[3], v[4]]);
But this is rather ugly to type and doesn't scale well with array size. So the question is "How to get a slice as an array in Rust?". I used a slightly modified version of Matthieu M.'s answer to said question (playground):
fn unpack_u32(data: [u8; 4]) -> u32 {
// as before without assert
}
use std::convert::AsMut;
fn clone_into_array<A, T>(slice: &[T]) -> A
where A: Default + AsMut<[T]>,
T: Clone
{
assert_eq!(slice.len(), std::mem::size_of::<A>()/std::mem::size_of::<T>());
let mut a = Default::default();
<A as AsMut<[T]>>::as_mut(&mut a).clone_from_slice(slice);
a
}
fn main() {
let v = vec![0_u8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8];
println!("res: {:X}", unpack_u32(clone_into_array(&v[1..5])));
}
As you can see, there is still an assert and thus the possibility of runtime failure. The Rust compiler isn't able to know that v[1..5] is 4 elements long, because 1..5 is just syntactic sugar for Range which is just a type the compiler knows nothing special about.
I think the answer is no as it is; a slice doesn't have a size (or minimum size) as part of the type, so there's nothing for the compiler to check; and similarly a vector is dynamically sized so there's no way to check at compile time that you can take a slice of the right size.
The only way I can see for the information to be even in principle available at compile time is if the function is applied to a compile-time known array. I think you'd still need to implement a procedural macro to do the check (so nightly Rust only, and it's not easy to do).
If the problem is efficiency rather than compile-time checking, you may be able to adjust your code so that, for example, you do one check for n*4 elements being available before n calls to your function; you could use the unsafe get_unchecked to avoid later redundant bounds checks. Obviously you'd need to be careful to avoid mistakes in the implementation.
I had a similar problem, creating a fixed byte-array on stack corresponding to const length of other byte-array (which may change during development time)
A combination of compiler plugin and macro was the solution:
https://github.com/frehberg/rust-sizedbytes
I have a boxed array of structs and I want to consume this array and insert it into a vector.
My current approach would be to convert the array into a vector, but the corresponding library function does not seem to work the way I expected.
let foo = Box::new([1, 2, 3, 4]);
let bar = foo.into_vec();
The compiler error states
no method named into_vec found for type Box<[_; 4]> in the current scope
I've found specifications here that look like
fn into_vec(self: Box<[T]>) -> Vec<T>
Converts self into a vector without clones or allocation.
... but I am not quite sure how to apply it. Any suggestions?
I think there's more cleaner way to do it. When you initialize foo, add type to it. Playground
fn main() {
let foo: Box<[u32]> = Box::new([1, 2, 3, 4]);
let bar = foo.into_vec();
println!("{:?}", bar);
}
The documentation you link to is for slices, i.e., [T], while what you have is an array of length 4: [T; 4].
You can, however, simply convert those, since an array of length 4 kinda is a slice. This works:
let foo = Box::new([1, 2, 3, 4]);
let bar = (foo as Box<[_]>).into_vec();
I've tried to use the following code:
fn main() {
let array = box [1, 2, 3];
}
, in my program, and it results in a compile error: error: obsolete syntax: ~[T] is no longer a type.
AFAIU, there are no dynamic size arrays in Rust (the size has to be known at compile time). However, in my code snippet the array does have static size and should be of type ~[T, ..3] (owned static array of size 3) whereas the compiler says it has the type ~[T]. Is there any deep reason why it isn't possible to get a static sized array allocated on the heap?
P.S. Yeah, I've heard about Vec.
Since I ended up here, others might as well. Rust has moved along and at the point of this answer Rust is at 1.53 for stable and 1.55 for nightly.
Box::new([1, 2, 3]) is the recommended way, and does its job, however there is a catch: The array is created on the stack and then copied over to the heap. This is a documented behaviour of Box:
Move a value from the stack to the heap by creating a Box:
Meaning, it contains a hidden memcopy, and with large array, the heap allocation even fails with a stack overflow.
const X: usize = 10_000_000;
let failing_huge_heap_array = [1; X];
thread 'main' has overflowed its stack
fatal runtime error: stack overflow
There are several workarounds to this as of now (Rust 1.53), the most straightforward is to create a vector and turn the vector into a boxed slice:
const X: usize = 10_000_000;
let huge_heap_array = vec![1; X].into_boxed_slice();
This works, but has two small catches: It looses the type information, what should be Box<[i32; 10000000]> is now Box<[usize]> and additionally takes up 16 bytes on the stack as opposed to an array which only takes 8.
...
println!("{}", mem::size_of_val(&huge_heap_array);
16
Not a huge deal, but it hurts my personal Monk factor.
Upon further research, discarding options that need nightly like the OP box [1, 2, 3] which seems to be coming back with the feature #![feature(box_syntax)] and the arr crate which is nice but also needs nightly, the best solution I found to allocating an array on the heap without the hidden memcopy
was a suggestion by Simias
/// A macro similar to `vec![$elem; $size]` which returns a boxed array.
///
/// ```rustc
/// let _: Box<[u8; 1024]> = box_array![0; 1024];
/// ```
macro_rules! box_array {
($val:expr ; $len:expr) => {{
// Use a generic function so that the pointer cast remains type-safe
fn vec_to_boxed_array<T>(vec: Vec<T>) -> Box<[T; $len]> {
let boxed_slice = vec.into_boxed_slice();
let ptr = ::std::boxed::Box::into_raw(boxed_slice) as *mut [T; $len];
unsafe { Box::from_raw(ptr) }
}
vec_to_boxed_array(vec![$val; $len])
}};
}
const X: usize = 10_000_000;
let huge_heap_array = box_array![1; X];
It does not overflow the stack and only takes up 8 bytes while preserving the type.
It uses unsafe, but limits this to a single line of code. Until the arrival of the box [1;X] syntax, IMHO a clean option.
As far as I know the box expression is experimental. You can use Box::new() with something like the code below to suppress warnings.
fn main() {
let array1 = Box::new([1, 2, 3]);
// or even
let array2: Box<[i32]> = Box::new([1, 2, 3]);
}
Check out the comment by Shepmaster below, as these are different types.
Just write like:
let mut buffer= vec![0; k]; it makes u8 array with length equals k.