Why are explicit lifetimes needed in Rust?

Question

I was reading the lifetimes chapter of the Rust book, and I came across this example for a named/explicit lifetime:

struct Foo<\'a> {
    x: &\'a i         


        

Answer 1

I've found another great explanation here: http://doc.rust-lang.org/0.12.0/guide-lifetimes.html#returning-references.

In general, it is only possible to return references if they are derived from a parameter to the procedure. In that case, the pointer result will always have the same lifetime as one of the parameters; named lifetimes indicate which parameter that is.

Answer 2

The reason why your example does not work is simply because Rust only has local lifetime and type inference. What you are suggesting demands global inference. Whenever you have a reference whose lifetime cannot be elided, it must be annotated.

Answer 3

I think of a lifetime annotation as a contract about a given ref been valid in the receiving scope only while it remains valid in the source scope. Declaring more references in the same lifetime kind of merges the scopes, meaning that all the source refs have to satisfy this contract. Such annotation allow the compiler to check for the fulfillment of the contract.

Answer 4

The case from the book is very simple by design. The topic of lifetimes is deemed complex.

The compiler cannot easily infer the lifetime in a function with multiple arguments.

Also, my own optional crate has an OptionBool type with an as_slice method whose signature actually is:

fn as_slice(&self) -> &'static [bool] { ... }

There is absolutely no way the compiler could have figured that one out.