Doc Memory, modes, and mutation

A guide for the perplexed.

Do you find yourself writing random punctuation marks in front of types in hopes of making the errors go away? I sure do. So I decided to write some documentation by randomly hitting keys on the keyboard, and having other people fix the errors.

Concepts

Slots

Slots are places where a value can live in memory, like the x in let x = 4 or {y: 3, x: 2}.

References

References are values that "point to" slots. As they are also values, they live in (presumably different) slots.

There is no way to ask for the "address of" a slot, in order to generate a reference to it. If you want a reference, you need to generate it in the heap with @ or ~, ensuring that it lives long enough to prevent dangling references. (This doesn't apply to the reference mode of parameters, lets, etc., described below. Because they have known, limited lifespans, the compiler can tell when it is safe for them to reference slots on the stack or inside structures.)

Mutability

If a slot is mutable, its contents may change:

let x_imm = 4;
let mut x_mut = 4;
x_mut = 456;
// x_imm = 456; // illegal

Mutability is shallow, not deep: a mutable slot may contain a reference to a structure with immutable slots, and an immutable slot may contain a reference to a structure with mutable slots.

Initialization

If a slot is uninitialized, you may not read it. For example, if you have let x: int;, you may not read x until you assign to it. This property is enforced at compile-time, so it is conservative.

The name is perhaps a little misleading; in Rust, it is possible for a slot to become uninitialized if it loses the "right" to access its contents, via moving.

Modes

Rust currently supports parameter-passing modes. There are five or six of them: +, -, ++, &, &&, and one that you get if you don't write any funny symbols. What do they mean? It is a mystery.

Regions

A region is basically a name for a lifetime of some data. Regions are used to ensure that data outlives any references to it.

Data/types

Boxes: @

The expression @2 produces a reference to a immutable slot in the heap. Executing that expression will result in an allocation, but no visible side-effects. Its type is @int.

If you want mutability (which is pretty much the only reason for putting integers into the heap), @mut 2 has the type @mut int. If you have a variable x with that value and type, you can change it with *x = 3.

Uniquely-referenced boxes: ~

Locally, ~2 is the same as @2, but it also means that no other references to that slot exist. So, the following function:

fn f(x: ~int) -> int {
  *x = 8;
  do_lots_of_complicated_stuff_with_callbacks_and_mutations_aplenty();
  ret *x
}

...always returns 8, because no one else has a reference to that slot to change it.

To enforce this, the compiler will give you errors if you attempt to implicitly copy a value with ~ as a type. Explicit copies will also recursively copy through ~s, to avoid duplication.

[]

Manipulating things

Binding: let

The statement let x: int = 3 introduces an immutable slot, named x, and initializes it with 3. You can use arbitrary patterns on the left of a let, and it will destructure the given value.

Assignment: =

The left-hand side of an = must designate a mutable slot. The right-hand side indicates what to put in that slot.

Transferring things around by reference: let, alt, and function invocations

Copying: copy

If you are handling a piece of data that might potentially be passed by reference, and you want to avoid that (either because ~ forbids it, or because you want to restrict the visibility of mutations), you can write copy. Copy is "as shallow as possible", which means that it descends through ~s, but stops at @, merely copying the reference.

Moving: <-

I'll figure out what is going on here later:

<pauls> It's not possible to move out only one field of a record, right?
 Is there any workaround other than recreating the whole record?
<eholk> pauls: if it's the last use, possibly
<eholk> you can also swap a mutable option with none
<nmatsakis> pauls: actually
<nmatsakis> it is possible
 in some cases
 e.g., if you have let x = {f: ~3};
 you can then write let {f: f} <- x;
 but this only works if the record itself is movable, of course.