Module prim_slice

A dynamically-sized view into a contiguous sequence, [T].

Contiguous here means that elements are laid out so that every element is the same distance from its neighbors.

See also the std::slice module.

Slices are a view into a block of memory represented as a pointer and a length.

// slicing a Vec
let vec = vec![1, 2, 3];
let int_slice = &vec[..];
// coercing an array to a slice
let str_slice: &[&str] = &["one", "two", "three"];

Slices are either mutable or shared. The shared slice type is &[T], while the mutable slice type is &mut [T], where T represents the element type. For example, you can mutate the block of memory that a mutable slice points to:

let mut x = [1, 2, 3];
let x = &mut x[..]; // Take a full slice of `x`.
x[1] = 7;
assert_eq!(x, &[1, 7, 3]);

It is possible to slice empty subranges of slices by using empty ranges (including slice.len()..slice.len()):

let x = [1, 2, 3];
let empty = &x[0..0];   // subslice before the first element
assert_eq!(empty, &[]);
let empty = &x[..0];    // same as &x[0..0]
assert_eq!(empty, &[]);
let empty = &x[1..1];   // empty subslice in the middle
assert_eq!(empty, &[]);
let empty = &x[3..3];   // subslice after the last element
assert_eq!(empty, &[]);
let empty = &x[3..];    // same as &x[3..3]
assert_eq!(empty, &[]);

It is not allowed to use subranges that start with lower bound bigger than slice.len():

let x = vec![1, 2, 3];
let _ = &x[4..4];

As slices store the length of the sequence they refer to, they have twice the size of pointers to Sized types. Also see the reference on dynamically sized types.

let pointer_size = size_of::<&u8>();
assert_eq!(2 * pointer_size, size_of::<&[u8]>());
assert_eq!(2 * pointer_size, size_of::<*const [u8]>());
assert_eq!(2 * pointer_size, size_of::<Box<[u8]>>());
assert_eq!(2 * pointer_size, size_of::<Rc<[u8]>>());

Trait Implementations

Some traits are implemented for slices if the element type implements that trait. This includes Eq, Hash and Ord.

Iteration

The slices implement IntoIterator. The iterator yields references to the slice elements.

let numbers: &[i32] = &[0, 1, 2];
for n in numbers {
    println!("{n} is a number!");
}

The mutable slice yields mutable references to the elements:

let mut scores: &mut [i32] = &mut [7, 8, 9];
for score in scores {
    *score += 1;
}

This iterator yields mutable references to the slice’s elements, so while the element type of the slice is i32, the element type of the iterator is &mut i32.

• .iter and .iter_mut are the explicit methods to return the default iterators.
• Further methods that return iterators are .split, .splitn, .chunks, .windows and more.