Casting
Rust provides no implicit type conversion (coercion) between primitive types.
But, explicit type conversion (casting) can be performed using the as
keyword.
Rules for converting between integral types follow C conventions generally, except in cases where C has undefined behavior. The behavior of all casts between integral types is well defined in Rust.
// Suppress all warnings from casts which overflow. #![allow(overflowing_literals)] fn main() { let decimal = 65.4321_f32; // Error! No implicit conversion let integer: u8 = decimal; // FIXME ^ Comment out this line // Explicit conversion let integer = decimal as u8; let character = integer as char; println!("Casting: {} -> {} -> {}", decimal, integer, character); // when casting any value to an unsigned type, T, // std::T::MAX + 1 is added or subtracted until the value // fits into the new type // 1000 already fits in a u16 println!("1000 as a u16 is: {}", 1000 as u16); // 1000 - 256 - 256 - 256 = 232 // Under the hood, the first 8 least significant bits (LSB) are kept, // while the rest towards the most significant bit (MSB) get truncated. println!("1000 as a u8 is : {}", 1000 as u8); // -1 + 256 = 255 println!(" -1 as a u8 is : {}", (-1i8) as u8); // For positive numbers, this is the same as the modulus println!("1000 mod 256 is : {}", 1000 % 256); // When casting to a signed type, the (bitwise) result is the same as // first casting to the corresponding unsigned type. If the most significant // bit of that value is 1, then the value is negative. // Unless it already fits, of course. println!(" 128 as a i16 is: {}", 128 as i16); // 128 as u8 -> 128, whose two's complement in eight bits is: println!(" 128 as a i8 is : {}", 128 as i8); // repeating the example above // 1000 as u8 -> 232 println!("1000 as a u8 is : {}", 1000 as u8); // and the two's complement of 232 is -24 println!(" 232 as a i8 is : {}", 232 as i8); }