Crate im [−] [src]
Immutable Data Structures for Rust
This library implements several of the more commonly useful immutable data structures for Rust. They rely on structural sharing to keep most operations fast without needing to mutate the underlying data store, leading to more predictable code without necessarily sacrificing performance.
Because Rust is not a garbage collected language, and immutable
data structures generally rely on some sort of garbage collection,
values inside these data structures are kept inside
Arc
s. Methods will generally accept either
owned values or Arc
s and perform conversion as
needed, but you'll have to expect to receive
Arc
s when iterating or performing lookup
operations. All caveats about using reference counted values apply
in general (eg. reference counting is simplistic and doesn't
detect loops).
A design goal of this library is to make using immutable data
structures as easy as it is in higher level languages, but
obviously there's only so much you can do. Methods will generally
attempt to coerce argument values where they can: where an
Arc
is called for, it will be able to figure
out how to convert whatever is provided into an
Arc
if it isn't already.
It's also been a design goal to provide as complete an API as
possible, which in a practical sense has meant going over the
equivalent implementations for Haskell to ensure the API covers
the same set of use cases. This obviously doesn't include things
like Foldable
and Functor
which aren't yet expressible in
Rust, but in these cases we've tried to make sure Rust iterators
are able to perform the same tasks.
Care has been taken to use method names similar to those in Rust
over those used in the source material (largely Haskell) where
possible (eg. Vector::new()
rather than Vector::empty()
,
HashMap::get()
rather than HashMap::lookup()
). Where Rust
equivalents don't exist, terminology tends to follow Haskell where
the Haskell isn't too confusing, or, when it is, we provide more
readily understandable aliases (because we wouldn't want to
deprive the user of their enjoyment of the word
'snoc
,' even though it's reportedly
not an obviously intuitive term).
Why Immutable Data Structures
Programming with immutable values, meaning that references to values can be relied on to always point to the same value, means that you can stop worrying about other parts of your code tampering with a value you're working on unexpectedly, or from unexpected parts of your code, making it a lot easier to keep track of what your code is actually doing.
Mutable values are, generally, a huge source of unexpected
behaviour that a lot of languages, like Haskell, Elm and Clojure,
have been designed to avoid altogether. Rust, being what it is,
does a good job of discouraging this kind of behaviour, and
keeping it strictly controlled when it's necessary, but the
standard library doesn't provide collection data structures which
are optimised for immutable operations. This means, for instance,
that if you want to add an item to a Vec
without modifying it in place, you first need to
clone
the whole thing before making
your change.
Data structures exist which are designed to be able to make these
copies much cheaper, usually by sharing structure between them,
which, because this structure is also immutable, is both cheap and
safe. The most basic example of this kind of data structure is the
ConsList
, where, if you have a list L
and you want to push an item I to the front of it, you'll get
back a new list which literally contains the data 'item I
followed by list L.' This operation is extremely inexpensive, but
of course this also means that certain other operations which
would be inexpensive for a Vec
are much more
costly for a ConsList
—index lookup is an
example of this, where for a Vec
it's just a
matter of going to memory location index times item size inside
the Vec
's memory buffer, but for a
ConsList
you'd have to walk through the
entire list from the start, following references through to other
list nodes, until you get to the right item.
While all immutable data structures tend to be less efficient than
their mutable counterparts, when chosen carefully they can perform
just as well for the operations you need, and there are some, like
Vector
and HashMap
,
which have performance characteristics good enough for most
operations that you can safely choose them without worrying too
much about whether they're going to be the right choice for any
given use case. Better yet, most of them can even be safely
mutated in place when they aren't sharing any structure with other
instances, making them nearly as performant as their mutable
counterparts.
Data Structures
We'll attempt to provide a comprehensive guide to the available data structures below.
Performance Notes
If you're not familiar with big O notation, here's a quick cheat sheet:
O(1) means an operation runs in constant time: it will take the same time to complete regardless of the size of the data structure.
O(n) means an operation runs in linear time: if you double the size of your data structure, the operation will take twice as long to complete; if you quadruple the size, it will take four times as long, etc.
O(log n) means an operation runs in logarithmic time: for log2, if you double the size of your data structure, the operation will take one step longer to complete; if you quadruple the size, it will need two steps more; and so on. However, the data structures in this library generally run in log16 time, meaning you have to make your data structure 16 times bigger to need one extra step, and 256 times bigger to need two steps. This means that, while they still count as O(log n), operations on all but really large data sets will run at near enough to O(1) that you won't usually notice.
O(1)* means 'amortised O(1),' which means that an operation usually runs in constant time but will occasionally be more expensive, often O(n). Please note that this is not a common notation; it's just a convention I've used in these docs to save myself from having to type 'amortised' everywhere.
Lists
Lists are ordered sequences of single elements, usually with cheap push/pop operations, and index lookup tends to be O(n). Lists are for collections of items where you expect to iterate rather than lookup.
Type | Constraints | Order | Push Front | Pop Front | Push Back | Pop Back | Append | Lookup |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Vector<A> | insertion | O(log n) | O(log n) | O(log n) | O(log n) | O(n) | O(log n) | |
CatList<A> | insertion | O(1) | O(1)* | O(1) | O(1)* | O(1) | O(n) | |
ConsList<A> | insertion | O(1) | O(1) | O(n) | O(n) | O(n) | O(n) |
Maps
Maps are mappings of keys to values, where the most common read operation is to find the value associated with a given key. Maps may or may not have a defined order. Any given key can only occur once inside a map, and setting a key to a different value will overwrite the previous value.
Type | Key Constraints | Order | Insert | Remove | Lookup |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
HashMap<K, V> | Hash + Eq | undefined | O(log n) | O(log n) | O(log n) |
OrdMap<K, V> | Ord | sorted | O(log n) | O(log n) | O(log n) |
Sets
Sets are collections of unique values, and may or may not have a defined order. Their crucial property is that any given value can only exist once in a given set.
Type | Constraints | Order | Insert | Remove | Lookup |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
HashSet<A> | Hash + Eq | undefined | O(log n) | O(log n) | O(log n) |
OrdSet<A> | Ord | sorted | O(log n) | O(log n) | O(log n) |
In-place Mutation
Most of these data structures support in-place copy-on-write
mutation, which means that if you're the sole user of a data
structure, you can update it in place with a huge performance
benefit (about an order of magnitude faster than immutable
operations, almost as fast as
std::collections
's mutable data structures).
Thanks to Arc
's reference counting, we are
able to determine whether a node in a data structure is being
shared with other data structures, or whether it's safe to mutate
it in place. When it's shared, we'll automatically make a copy of
the node before modifying it, thus preserving the usual guarantees
you get from using an immutable data structure.
Re-exports
pub use catlist::CatList; |
pub use conslist::ConsList; |
pub use hashmap::HashMap; |
pub use hashset::HashSet; |
pub use ordmap::OrdMap; |
pub use ordset::OrdSet; |
pub use vector::Vector; |
Modules
catlist |
A catenable list. |
conslist |
A cons list. |
hashmap |
A hash map. |
hashset |
A hash set. |
iter |
Iterators over immutable data. |
ordmap |
An ordered map. |
ordset |
An ordered set. |
shared |
Automatic |
vector |
A vector. |
Macros
catlist |
Construct a list from a sequence of elements. |
conslist |
Construct a list from a sequence of elements. |
get_in |
Get a value inside multiple levels of data structures. |
hashmap |
Construct a hash map from a sequence of key/value pairs. |
hashset |
Construct a set from a sequence of values. |
ordmap |
Construct a map from a sequence of key/value pairs. |
ordset |
Construct a set from a sequence of values. |
set_in |
Update a value inside multiple levels of data structures. |
vector |
Construct a vector from a sequence of elements. |
Type Definitions
List | |
Map | |
Set |