Confusion between [T] and &[T]

霸气de小男生 提交于 2020-05-26 11:23:20

问题


I'm currently confused by [T] and &[T] in Rust. Let's start by what I know:

  • [T; n] is an array of n elements,
  • &[T; n] is a pointer to an array with n elements,
  • [T] is unsized and points to sequence of elements T, while
  • &[T] is a sized fat pointer and points to a sequence of elements T.

My confusion starts with the naming convention of the two items. From the documentation of Rust, they provide the following example:

let a: [i32; 5] = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; // An array of type [T, n]
let slice: &[i32] = &a[1..3]; // A slice of type &[T]

and states

This slice has the type &[i32].

So, I assume &[T] is called a slice. What's the name of the item [T] so ? What is the usage of [T] exactly ? You can't embed it into a struct (it's unsized), you can't take this type in parameter for the same reason. I can't figure out a practical usage of it.

Thanks!


回答1:


What's the name of the item [T] so ? What is the usage of [T] exactly ?

[T] is a block of contiguous memory, filled with items of type T. It is rarely referred to by name directly because it needs to be behind a pointer to be useful. That is usually a &[T], commonly referred to as a slice, but could also be other pointer types.

The term "slice" is overloaded, but it is not usually a cause of confusion since it really doesn't come up much. In general, if the word "slice" is used by itself then it means &[T]. If it has some other modifier, then it probably refers to a different pointer type. For example Box<[T]> is a "boxed slice" and Rc<[T]> might be called a "ref-counted slice".




回答2:


Regarding slices:

E.g. string literals are slices of type &str. But slices of Strings (of type String) are also of type &str such as slice: &str = &String [0..n-1].

Furthermore, slice: &[T] in:

  • Arrays like array: [T; n] - if you want a piece of it, you can take a slice = &array [1..n-1] which means that slice is of type &[T].

  • Vectors such as vector: Vec<T> you can take a part of it as a slice: &[T].



来源:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57808948/confusion-between-t-and-t

标签
易学教程内所有资源均来自网络或用户发布的内容,如有违反法律规定的内容欢迎反馈
该文章没有解决你所遇到的问题?点击提问,说说你的问题,让更多的人一起探讨吧!