Expand description
A string interner.
A string interner stores a pool of immutable strings keeping a single copy
of each string value. A Symbol is a wrapper over a pointer to
one of these unique string values. Symbols can be compared quickly (pointer
rather than string comparisons) and are cheaper to store than strings when
several occurrences of a given string exist.
Examples
use stagiaire::Symbol;
// Create a new symbol.
let a_foo = Symbol::new("foo");
assert_eq!(a_foo.as_str(), "foo");
// Create another symbol that refers to an existing value.
let another_foo = Symbol::new("foo");
assert_eq!(a_foo, another_foo);
// Both symbols point to the same underlying value.
assert_eq!(a_foo.as_str().as_ptr(), another_foo.as_str().as_ptr());
// A symbol has the same size as a reference.
assert_eq!(std::mem::size_of::<Symbol>(), std::mem::size_of::<&str>());
// Symbols pointing to different values are not equal.
let a_bar = Symbol::new("bar");
assert_ne!(a_bar, a_foo);Lifetime
The interner is a process-wide singleton not exposed programmatically and
string values stored there persist until the owning process terminates and
have therefore a 'static lifetime.
Thread-safety
Symbol values can be created and accessed from multiple threads.
Serialization
A Symbol can optionally be serialized and deserialized using
serde. To enable this, build with the
serde feature on.
Structs
Wrapper over a reference to an interned string.