rust/lifetime-elision.md
2015-07-06 18:36:16 -07:00

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% Lifetime Elision
In order to make common patterns more ergonomic, Rust allows lifetimes to be
*elided* in function signatures.
A *lifetime position* is anywhere you can write a lifetime in a type:
```rust
&'a T
&'a mut T
T<'a>
```
Lifetime positions can appear as either "input" or "output":
* For `fn` definitions, input refers to the types of the formal arguments
in the `fn` definition, while output refers to
result types. So `fn foo(s: &str) -> (&str, &str)` has elided one lifetime in
input position and two lifetimes in output position.
Note that the input positions of a `fn` method definition do not
include the lifetimes that occur in the method's `impl` header
(nor lifetimes that occur in the trait header, for a default method).
* In the future, it should be possible to elide `impl` headers in the same manner.
Elision rules are as follows:
* Each elided lifetime in input position becomes a distinct lifetime
parameter.
* If there is exactly one input lifetime position (elided or not), that lifetime
is assigned to *all* elided output lifetimes.
* If there are multiple input lifetime positions, but one of them is `&self` or
`&mut self`, the lifetime of `self` is assigned to *all* elided output lifetimes.
* Otherwise, it is an error to elide an output lifetime.
Examples:
```rust
fn print(s: &str); // elided
fn print<'a>(s: &'a str); // expanded
fn debug(lvl: uint, s: &str); // elided
fn debug<'a>(lvl: uint, s: &'a str); // expanded
fn substr(s: &str, until: uint) -> &str; // elided
fn substr<'a>(s: &'a str, until: uint) -> &'a str; // expanded
fn get_str() -> &str; // ILLEGAL
fn frob(s: &str, t: &str) -> &str; // ILLEGAL
fn get_mut(&mut self) -> &mut T; // elided
fn get_mut<'a>(&'a mut self) -> &'a mut T; // expanded
fn args<T:ToCStr>(&mut self, args: &[T]) -> &mut Command // elided
fn args<'a, 'b, T:ToCStr>(&'a mut self, args: &'b [T]) -> &'a mut Command // expanded
fn new(buf: &mut [u8]) -> BufWriter; // elided
fn new<'a>(buf: &'a mut [u8]) -> BufWriter<'a> // expanded
```