Enums

La palabra clave enum permite crear un tipo que tiene diferentes variantes:

#[derive(Debug)]
enum Direction {
    Left,
    Right,
}

#[derive(Debug)]
enum PlayerMove {
    Pass,                        // Simple variant
    Run(Direction),              // Tuple variant
    Teleport { x: u32, y: u32 }, // Struct variant
}

fn main() {
    let m: PlayerMove = PlayerMove::Run(Direction::Left);
    println!("On this turn: {:?}", m);
}
This slide should take about 5 minutes.

Puntos Clave:

  • Enumerations allow you to collect a set of values under one type.
  • Direction is a type with variants. There are two values of Direction: Direction::Left and Direction::Right.
  • PlayerMove is a type with three variants. In addition to the payloads, Rust will store a discriminant so that it knows at runtime which variant is in a PlayerMove value.
  • This might be a good time to compare structs and enums:
    • In both, you can have a simple version without fields (unit struct) or one with different types of fields (variant payloads).
    • You could even implement the different variants of an enum with separate structs but then they wouldn’t be the same type as they would if they were all defined in an enum.
  • Rust uses minimal space to store the discriminant.

    • If necessary, it stores an integer of the smallest required size

    • If the allowed variant values do not cover all bit patterns, it will use invalid bit patterns to encode the discriminant (the “niche optimization”). For example, Option<&u8> stores either a pointer to an integer or NULL for the None variant.

    • Puedes controlar el discriminante si es necesario (por ejemplo, para asegurar la compatibilidad con C):

      #[repr(u32)]
enum Bar {
    A, // 0
    B = 10000,
    C, // 10001
}

fn main() {
    println!("A: {}", Bar::A as u32);
    println!("B: {}", Bar::B as u32);
    println!("C: {}", Bar::C as u32);
}

      Sin repr, el tipo discriminante ocupa 2 bytes, debido a que 10001 se cabe en 2 bytes.

More to Explore

Rust has several optimizations it can employ to make enums take up less space.

  • Optimización de puntero nulo: para algunos tipos, Rust asegura que size_of::<T>() es igual a size_of::<Option<T> >().

    Fragmento de código de ejemplo si quieres mostrar cómo puede ser la representación bit a bit en la práctica. Es importante tener en cuenta que el compilador no ofrece garantías con respecto a esta representación, por lo tanto es totalmente inseguro. 

    use std::mem::transmute;

macro_rules! dbg_bits {
    ($e:expr, $bit_type:ty) => {
        println!("- {}: {:#x}", stringify!($e), transmute::<_, $bit_type>($e));
    };
}

fn main() {
    unsafe {
        println!("bool:");
        dbg_bits!(false, u8);
        dbg_bits!(true, u8);

        println!("Option<bool>:");
        dbg_bits!(None::<bool>, u8);
        dbg_bits!(Some(false), u8);
        dbg_bits!(Some(true), u8);

        println!("Option<Option<bool>>:");
        dbg_bits!(Some(Some(false)), u8);
        dbg_bits!(Some(Some(true)), u8);
        dbg_bits!(Some(None::<bool>), u8);
        dbg_bits!(None::<Option<bool>>, u8);

        println!("Option<&i32>:");
        dbg_bits!(None::<&i32>, usize);
        dbg_bits!(Some(&0i32), usize);
    }
}