Higher-Rank Trait Bounds (HRTBs)
Rust's Fn
traits are a little bit magic. For instance, we can write the
following code:
struct Closure<F> { data: (u8, u16), func: F, } impl<F> Closure<F> where F: Fn(&(u8, u16)) -> &u8, { fn call(&self) -> &u8 { (self.func)(&self.data) } } fn do_it(data: &(u8, u16)) -> &u8 { &data.0 } fn main() { let clo = Closure { data: (0, 1), func: do_it }; println!("{}", clo.call()); }
If we try to naively desugar this code in the same way that we did in the lifetimes section, we run into some trouble:
struct Closure<F> {
data: (u8, u16),
func: F,
}
impl<F> Closure<F>
// where F: Fn(&'??? (u8, u16)) -> &'??? u8,
{
fn call<'a>(&'a self) -> &'a u8 {
(self.func)(&self.data)
}
}
fn do_it<'b>(data: &'b (u8, u16)) -> &'b u8 { &'b data.0 }
fn main() {
'x: {
let clo = Closure { data: (0, 1), func: do_it };
println!("{}", clo.call());
}
}
How on earth are we supposed to express the lifetimes on F
's trait bound? We
need to provide some lifetime there, but the lifetime we care about can't be
named until we enter the body of call
! Also, that isn't some fixed lifetime;
call
works with any lifetime &self
happens to have at that point.
This job requires The Magic of Higher-Rank Trait Bounds (HRTBs). The way we desugar this is as follows:
where for<'a> F: Fn(&'a (u8, u16)) -> &'a u8,
(Where Fn(a, b, c) -> d
is itself just sugar for the unstable real Fn
trait)
for<'a>
can be read as "for all choices of 'a
", and basically produces an
infinite list of trait bounds that F must satisfy. Intense. There aren't many
places outside of the Fn
traits where we encounter HRTBs, and even for
those we have a nice magic sugar for the common cases.