Generic Types, Traits, and Lifetimes

Every programming language has tools to deal effectively with duplication of concepts; in Rust, one of those tools is generics. Generics are abstract stand-ins for concrete types or other properties. When we’re writing and compiling the code we can express properties of generics, such as their behavior or how they relate to other generics, without needing to know what will actually be in their place.

In the same way that a function takes parameters whose value we don’t know in order to write code once that will be run on multiple concrete values, we can write functions that take parameters of some generic type instead of a concrete type like i32 or String. We’ve already used generics in Chapter 6 with Option<T>, Chapter 8 with Vec<T> and HashMap<K, V>, and Chapter 9 with Result<T, E>. In this chapter, we’ll explore how to define our own types, functions, and methods with generics!

First, we’re going to review the mechanics of extracting a function that reduces code duplication. Then we’ll use the same mechanics to make a generic function out of two functions that only differ in the types of their parameters. We’ll go over using generic types in struct and enum definitions too.

After that, we’ll discuss traits, which are a way to define behavior in a generic way. Traits can be combined with generic types in order to constrain a generic type to those types that have a particular behavior, rather than any type at all.

Finally, we’ll discuss lifetimes, which are a kind of generic that let us give the compiler information about how references are related to each other. Lifetimes are the feature in Rust that allow us to borrow values in many situations and still have the compiler check that references will be valid.

Removing Duplication by Extracting a Function

Before getting into generics syntax, let’s first review a technique for dealing with duplication that doesn’t use generic types: extracting a function. Once that’s fresh in our minds, we’ll use the same mechanics with generics to extract a generic function! In the same way that you recognize duplicated code to extract into a function, you’ll start to recognize duplicated code that can use generics.

Consider a small program that finds the largest number in a list, shown in Listing 10-1:

Filename: src/main.rs

fn main() {
    let number_list = vec![34, 50, 25, 100, 65];

    let mut largest = number_list[0];

    for number in number_list {
        if number > largest {
            largest = number;
        }
    }

    println!("The largest number is {}", largest);
#  assert_eq!(largest, 100);
}

Listing 10-1: Code to find the largest number in a list of numbers

This code takes a list of integers, stored here in the variable number_list. It puts the first item in the list in a variable named largest. Then it iterates through all the numbers in the list, and if the current value is greater than the number stored in largest, it replaces the value in largest. If the current value is smaller than the largest value seen so far, largest is not changed. When all the items in the list have been considered, largest will hold the largest value, which in this case is 100.

If we needed to find the largest number in two different lists of numbers, we could duplicate the code in Listing 10-1 and have the same logic exist in two places in the program, as in Listing 10-2:

Filename: src/main.rs

fn main() {
    let number_list = vec![34, 50, 25, 100, 65];

    let mut largest = number_list[0];

    for number in number_list {
        if number > largest {
            largest = number;
        }
    }

    println!("The largest number is {}", largest);

    let number_list = vec![102, 34, 6000, 89, 54, 2, 43, 8];

    let mut largest = number_list[0];

    for number in number_list {
        if number > largest {
            largest = number;
        }
    }

    println!("The largest number is {}", largest);
}

Listing 10-2: Code to find the largest number in two lists of numbers

While this code works, duplicating code is tedious and error-prone, and means we have multiple places to update the logic if we need to change it.

To eliminate this duplication, we can create an abstraction, which in this case will be in the form of a function that operates on any list of integers given to the function in a parameter. This will increase the clarity of our code and let us communicate and reason about the concept of finding the largest number in a list independently of the specific places this concept is used.

In the program in Listing 10-3, we’ve extracted the code that finds the largest number into a function named largest. This program can find the largest number in two different lists of numbers, but the code from Listing 10-1 only exists in one spot:

Filename: src/main.rs

fn largest(list: &[i32]) -> i32 {
    let mut largest = list[0];

    for &item in list.iter() {
        if item > largest {
            largest = item;
        }
    }

    largest
}

fn main() {
    let number_list = vec![34, 50, 25, 100, 65];

    let result = largest(&number_list);
    println!("The largest number is {}", result);
#    assert_eq!(result, 100);

    let number_list = vec![102, 34, 6000, 89, 54, 2, 43, 8];

    let result = largest(&number_list);
    println!("The largest number is {}", result);
#    assert_eq!(result, 6000);
}

Listing 10-3: Abstracted code to find the largest number in two lists

The function has a parameter, list, which represents any concrete slice of i32 values that we might pass into the function. The code in the function definition operates on the list representation of any &[i32]. When we call the largest function, the code actually runs on the specific values that we pass in.

The mechanics we went through to get from Listing 10-2 to Listing 10-3 were these steps:

1. We noticed there was duplicate code.
2. We extracted the duplicate code into the body of the function, and specified the inputs and return values of that code in the function signature.
3. We replaced the two concrete places that had the duplicated code to call the function instead.

We can use these same steps with generics to reduce code duplication in different ways in different scenarios. In the same way that the function body is now operating on an abstract list instead of concrete values, code using generics will operate on abstract types. The concepts powering generics are the same concepts you already know that power functions, just applied in different ways.

What if we had two functions, one that found the largest item in a slice of i32 values and one that found the largest item in a slice of char values? How would we get rid of that duplication? Let’s find out!