heaparray 0.4.1

# heaparray

This crate aims to give people better control of how they want to allocate memory,
by providing a customizable way to allocate blocks of memory, that optionally contains
metadata about the block itself.

It has two main features that provide the foundation for the rest:

- **Storing data next to an array:** From the
  [Rust documentation on exotically sized types](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/exotic-sizes.html),
  at the end of the section on dynamically-sized types:

  > Currently the only properly supported way to create a custom DST is by
  > making your type generic and performing an unsizing coercion
  > ...
  > (Yes, custom DSTs are a largely half-baked feature for now.)

  This crate aims to provide *some* of that functionality; the code that
  the docs give is the following:

  ```rust
  struct MySuperSliceable<T: ?Sized> {
      info: u32,
      data: T
  }

  fn main() {
      let sized: MySuperSliceable<[u8; 8]> = MySuperSliceable {
          info: 17,
          data: [0; 8],
      };

      let dynamic: &MySuperSliceable<[u8]> = &sized;

      // prints: "17 [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]"
      println!("{} {:?}", dynamic.info, &dynamic.data);
  }
  ```

  using this crate, the `MySuperSliceable<[u8]>` type would be
  implemented like this:

  ```rust
  use heaparray::*;

  fn main() {
      let dynamic = HeapArray::<u8,u32>::with_label(17, 8, |_,_| 0);
      println!("{:?}", dynamic);
  }
  ```

- **Thin pointer arrays:** in Rust, unsized structs are referenced with
  pointers that are stored with an associated length; these are called fat
  pointers. This behavior isn't always desired, so this crate provides
  both thin and fat pointer-referenced arrays, where the length is stored
  with the data instead of with the pointer in the thin pointer variant.

### Features
- Arrays are allocated on the heap, with optional extra space allocated for metadata
- 1-word and 2-word references to arrays
- Atomically reference-counted memory blocks of arbitrary size without using a `Vec`;
  this means you can access reference-counted memory with only a single pointer
  indirection.
- Swap owned objects in and out with `array.insert()`
- Arbitrarily sized objects using label and an array of bytes (`u8`)

### Examples
Creating an array:

```rust
use heaparray::*;
let len = 10;
let array = HeapArray::new(len, |idx| idx + 3);
assert!(array[1] == 4);
```

Indexing works as you would expect:

```rust
use heaparray::*;
let mut array = HeapArray::new(10, |_| 0);
array[3] = 2;
assert!(array[3] == 2);
```

You can take ownership of objects back from the container:

```rust
let mut array = HeapArray::new(10, |_| Vec::<u8>::new());
let replacement_object = Vec::new();
let owned_object = array.insert(0, replacement_object);
```

but you need to give the array a replacement object to fill its slot with.

Additionally, you can customize what information should be stored alongside
the elements in the array using the `HeapArray::with_label` function:

```rust
struct MyLabel {
    pub even: usize,
    pub odd: usize,
}

let mut array = HeapArray::with_label(
    MyLabel { even: 0, odd: 0 },
    100,
    |label, index| {
        if index % 2 == 0 {
            label.even += 1;
            index
        } else {
            label.odd += 1;
            index
        }
    });
```
### Use of `unsafe` Keyword
This library relies heavily on the use of the `unsafe` keyword to do both
reference counting and atomic operations; there are 14 instances total,
not including tests.

### Customizability
All of the implementation details of this crate are public and documented; if you'd
like to implement your own version of the tools available through this crate,
note that you don't need to reinvent the wheel; many of the types in this crate
are generic over certain traits, so you might not need to do that much.

License: MIT