1.0.0[−][src]Module ndless::boxed
A pointer type for heap allocation.
Box<T>
, casually referred to as a 'box', provides the simplest form of
heap allocation in Rust. Boxes provide ownership for this allocation, and
drop their contents when they go out of scope.
Examples
Move a value from the stack to the heap by creating a Box
:
let val: u8 = 5; let boxed: Box<u8> = Box::new(val);
Move a value from a Box
back to the stack by dereferencing:
let boxed: Box<u8> = Box::new(5); let val: u8 = *boxed;
Creating a recursive data structure:
#[derive(Debug)] enum List<T> { Cons(T, Box<List<T>>), Nil, } fn main() { let list: List<i32> = List::Cons(1, Box::new(List::Cons(2, Box::new(List::Nil)))); println!("{:?}", list); }
This will print Cons(1, Cons(2, Nil))
.
Recursive structures must be boxed, because if the definition of Cons
looked like this:
Cons(T, List<T>),
It wouldn't work. This is because the size of a List
depends on how many
elements are in the list, and so we don't know how much memory to allocate
for a Cons
. By introducing a Box
, which has a defined size, we know how
big Cons
needs to be.
Structs
Box | A pointer type for heap allocation. |
Traits
FnBox | [ Experimental ]
|