Expand description
This crate gives small utilities for casting between plain data types.
§Basics
Data comes in five basic forms in Rust, so we have five basic casting functions:
Tusescast&Tusescast_ref&mut Tusescast_mut&[T]usescast_slice&mut [T]usescast_slice_mut
Depending on the function, the NoUninit and/or AnyBitPattern traits
are used to maintain memory safety.
Historical Note: When the crate first started the Pod trait was used
instead, and so you may hear people refer to that, but it has the strongest
requirements and people eventually wanted the more fine-grained system, so
here we are. All types that impl Pod have a blanket impl to also support
NoUninit and AnyBitPattern. The traits unfortunately do not have a
perfectly clean hierarchy for semver reasons.
§Failures
Some casts will never fail, and other casts might fail.
cast::<u32, f32>always works (andf32::from_bits).cast_ref::<[u8; 4], u32>might fail if the specific array reference given at runtime doesn’t have alignment 4.
In addition to the “normal” forms of each function, which will panic on
invalid input, there’s also try_ versions which will return a Result.
If you would like to statically ensure that a cast will work at runtime you
can use the must_cast crate feature and the must_ casting functions. A
“must cast” that can’t be statically known to be valid will cause a
compilation error (and sometimes a very hard to read compilation error).
§Using Your Own Types
All the functions listed above are guarded by the Pod trait, which is a
sub-trait of the Zeroable trait.
If you enable the crate’s derive feature then these traits can be derived
on your own types. The derive macros will perform the necessary checks on
your type declaration, and trigger an error if your type does not qualify.
The derive macros might not cover all edge cases, and sometimes they will
error when actually everything is fine. As a last resort you can impl these
traits manually. However, these traits are unsafe, and you should
carefully read the requirements before using a manual implementation.
§Cargo Features
The crate supports Rust 1.34 when no features are enabled, and so there’s cargo features for thing that you might consider “obvious”.
The cargo features do not promise any particular MSRV, and they may increase their MSRV in new versions.
derive: Provide derive macros for the various traits.extern_crate_alloc: Provide utilities forallocrelated types such as Box and Vec.zeroable_maybe_uninitandzeroable_atomics: Provide moreZeroableimpls.pod_saturating: Provide morePodandZeroableimpls.wasm_simdandaarch64_simd: Support more SIMD types.min_const_generics: Provides appropriate impls for arrays of all lengths instead of just for a select list of array lengths.must_cast: Provides themust_functions, which will compile error if the requested cast can’t be statically verified.const_zeroed: Provides a const version of thezeroedfunction.
§Related Crates
pack1, which containsbytemuck-compatible packed little-endian, big-endian and native-endian integer and floating point number types.
Modules§
- __core
- The Rust Core Library
- allocation
- Stuff to boost things in the
alloccrate. - checked
- Checked versions of the casting functions exposed in crate root
that support
CheckedBitPatterntypes.
Macros§
- offset_
of - Find the offset in bytes of the given
$fieldof$Type. Requires an already initialized$instancevalue to work with.
Structs§
- BoxBytes
- As
Box<[u8]>, but remembers the original alignment.
Enums§
- PodCast
Error - The things that can go wrong when casting between
Poddata forms.
Traits§
- AnyBit
Pattern - Marker trait for “plain old data” types that are valid for any bit pattern.
- Checked
BitPattern - A marker trait that allows types that have some invalid bit patterns to be
used in places that otherwise require
AnyBitPatternorPodtypes by performing a runtime check on a perticular set of bits. This is particularly useful for types like fieldless (‘C-style’) enums,char, bool, and structs containing them. - Contiguous
- A trait indicating that:
- NoUninit
- Marker trait for “plain old data” types with no uninit (or padding) bytes.
- Pod
- Marker trait for “plain old data”.
- PodIn
Option - Trait for types which are Pod when wrapped in Option.
- Transparent
Wrapper - A trait which indicates that a type is a
#[repr(transparent)]wrapper around theInnervalue. - Transparent
Wrapper Alloc - An extension trait for
TransparentWrapperand alloc types. - Zeroable
- Trait for types that can be safely created with
zeroed. - Zeroable
InOption - Trait for types which are Zeroable when wrapped in Option.
Functions§
- box_
bytes_ of - Re-interprets
Box<T>asBoxBytes. - bytes_
of - Re-interprets
&Tas&[u8]. - bytes_
of_ mut - Re-interprets
&mut Tas&mut [u8]. - cast
- Cast
AintoB - cast_
arc - As
try_cast_arc, but unwraps for you. - cast_
box - As
try_cast_box, but unwraps for you. - cast_
mut - Cast
&mut Ainto&mut B. - cast_rc
- As
try_cast_rc, but unwraps for you. - cast_
ref - Cast
&Ainto&B. - cast_
slice - Cast
&[A]into&[B]. - cast_
slice_ arc - As
try_cast_slice_arc, but unwraps for you. - cast_
slice_ box - As
try_cast_slice_box, but unwraps for you. - cast_
slice_ mut - Cast
&mut [A]into&mut [B]. - cast_
slice_ rc - As
try_cast_slice_rc, but unwraps for you. - cast_
vec - As
try_cast_vec, but unwraps for you. - fill_
zeroes - Fill all bytes of
slicewith zeroes (seeZeroable). - from_
box_ bytes - Re-interprets
BoxBytesasBox<T>. - from_
bytes - Re-interprets
&[u8]as&T. - from_
bytes_ mut - Re-interprets
&mut [u8]as&mut T. - pod_
align_ to - As
align_to, but safe because of thePodbound. - pod_
align_ to_ mut - As
align_to_mut, but safe because of thePodbound. - pod_
collect_ to_ vec - This “collects” a slice of pod data into a vec of a different pod type.
- pod_
read_ unaligned - Reads the slice into a
Tvalue. - try_
cast - Try to cast
AintoB. - try_
cast_ arc - Attempts to cast the content type of a
Arc. - try_
cast_ box - Attempts to cast the content type of a
Box. - try_
cast_ mut - Try to convert a
&mut Ainto&mut B. - try_
cast_ rc - Attempts to cast the content type of a
Rc. - try_
cast_ ref - Try to convert a
&Ainto&B. - try_
cast_ slice - Try to convert
&[A]into&[B](possibly with a change in length). - try_
cast_ slice_ arc - Attempts to cast the content type of a
Arc<[T]>. - try_
cast_ slice_ box - Attempts to cast the content type of a
Box<[T]>. - try_
cast_ slice_ mut - Try to convert
&mut [A]into&mut [B](possibly with a change in length). - try_
cast_ slice_ rc - Attempts to cast the content type of a
Rc<[T]>. - try_
cast_ vec - Attempts to cast the content type of a
Vec. - try_
from_ box_ bytes - Re-interprets
BoxBytesasBox<T>. - try_
from_ bytes - Re-interprets
&[u8]as&T. - try_
from_ bytes_ mut - Re-interprets
&mut [u8]as&mut T. - try_
pod_ read_ unaligned - Reads from the bytes as if they were a
T. - try_
zeroed_ box - Allocates a
Box<T>with all of the contents being zeroed out. - try_
zeroed_ slice_ box - Allocates a
Box<[T]>with all contents being zeroed out. - try_
zeroed_ vec - Allocates a
Vec<T>of length and capacity exactly equal tolengthand all elements zeroed. - write_
zeroes - Fill all bytes of
targetwith zeroes (seeZeroable). - zeroed_
box - As
try_zeroed_box, but unwraps for you. - zeroed_
slice_ box - As
try_zeroed_slice_box, but unwraps for you. - zeroed_
vec - As
try_zeroed_vecbut unwraps for you