Arrays and Slices: a collection of objects of the same type T
- An array is a collection of objects of the same type
T
, stored in contiguous memory.
- Arrays are created using brackets
[]
- and their length, which is known at compile time, is part of their type signature
[T; length]
.
- Slices are similar to arrays, but their length is not known at compile time.
- Instead, a slice is a two-word object
- the first word is a pointer to the data
- and the second word is the length of the slice.
- The word size is the same as usize, determined by the processor architecture e.g. 64 bits on an x86-64.
- Slices can be used to borrow a section of an array, and have the type signature
&[T]
.
Array compares to slice
use std::mem; // This function borrows a slice fn analyze_slice(slice: &[i32]) { println!("first element of the slice: {}", slice[0]); println!("the slice has {} elements", slice.len()); } fn main() { // Fixed-size array (type signature is superfluous) let xs: [i32; 5] = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; // All elements can be initialized to the same value let ys: [i32; 500] = [0; 500]; // Indexing starts at 0 println!("first element of the array: {}", xs[0]); println!("second element of the array: {}", xs[1]); // `len` returns the count of elements in the array println!("number of elements in array: {}", xs.len()); // Arrays are stack allocated println!("array occupies {} bytes", mem::size_of_val(&xs)); // Arrays can be automatically borrowed as slices println!("borrow the whole array as a slice"); analyze_slice(&xs); // Slices can point to a section of an array // They are of the form [starting_index..ending_index] // starting_index is the first position in the slice // ending_index is one more than the last position in the slice println!("borrow a section of the array as a slice"); analyze_slice(&ys[1 .. 4]); // Example of empty slice `&[]` let empty_array: [u32; 0] = []; assert_eq!(&empty_array, &[]); assert_eq!(&empty_array, &[][..]); // same but more verbose // Arrays can be safely accessed using `.get`, which returns an // `Option`. This can be matched as shown below, or used with // `.expect()` if you would like the program to exit with a nice // message instead of happily continue. for i in 0..xs.len() + 1 { // OOPS, one element too far match xs.get(i) { Some(xval) => println!("{}: {}", i, xval), None => println!("Slow down! {} is too far!", i), } } // Out of bound indexing causes runtime error //println!("{}", xs[5]); }
- Fixed-size array (type signature is superfluous)
- All elements can be initialized to the same value
- Indexing starts at 0
len
returns the count of elements in the array- Arrays are stack allocated
- Arrays can be automatically borrowed as slices
- Slices can point to a section of an array
- They are of the form [starting_index..ending_index]
- starting_index is the first position in the slice
- ending_index is one more than the last position in the slice