Beginner question on boolean

[longstation]

Hi, I am new to Rust and I am using rustings to get familiar with it. One of the question has a bonus question: what would make a.len() also return true. I have no idea and couldn't find any one mentioning it on the internet so I suppose it's very trivial. Here is the question:

// primitive_types3.rs
// Create an array with at least 100 elements in it where the ??? is. 
// Execute `rustlings hint primitive_types3` for hints!

// I AM NOT DONE

fn main() {
    let a = ??? // make it something like [7, 100] is the obvious solution.

    if a.len() >= 100 {
        println!("Wow, that's a big array!");
    } else {
        println!("Meh, I eat arrays like that for breakfast.");
    }
}

Here is the bonus question:

Bonus: what are some other things you could have that would return true
for a.len() >= 100?

[naim]

You can create a range:

let a = 0..20000;

[daboross]

This looks like a fairly open-ended question, looking for exploration. What about searching on rust's docs for functions named len? Not all of those are useful, but there are quite a few which you could create. It also includes some trait methods, like ExactSizeIterator::len, which could lead towards more different things you could make.

[OptimisticPeach]

There are a variety of standard things in Rust which have a .len method:

• &strs (and transitively, Strings too):

  "abc".len() == 3
  String::new("abc").len() == 3
  

  ^{And don't forget about the other kinds of strings too! Like OsString, and CString, etc.}
• Arrays (as you've already covered), and slices:

  [0; 10].len() == 10
  [0, 1, 2].len() == 3
  [0, 1, 2, 3, 4][..].len() == 5
  [0; 10][3..] == 7
  

• On top of regular slices, you really have anything that can turn into a slice:

  (Box::new([0; 2]) as Box<[u8]>).len() == 2
  (Arc::new([0; 2]) as Arc<[u8]>).len() == 2
  (Rc::new([0; 3]) as Rc<[u8]>).len() == 3
  vec![0, 1, 2, 3].len() == 4 //vec! is a macro for making a Vec.
  

• Any of the types for which ExactSizeIterator is implemented. This includes the double-ended range mentioned above.
• The collections, Vec, HashMap, HashSet, BTreeMap, BTreeSet, etc.

I'm not including unsafe variants, because they're all basically the same, except for you need to do (*value).len(), or maybe insert a get_mut_unchecked or something.

[Cerber-Ursi]

And, of course, you can create your own custom struct and implement the len method directly on it:

struct VeryLong;
impl VeryLong {
    fn len(&self) -> usize {
        1000
    }
}

fn main() {
    let a = VeryLong;

    if a.len() >= 100 {
        println!("Wow, that's a big array!");
    } else {
        println!("Meh, I eat arrays like that for breakfast.");
    }
}

Playground

[longstation]

Thanks for the help! I didn't know this is possible. That's probably what the bonus question is for.

[longstation]

Originally I thought it must be something related to array but now I read the question again I think it's just an open-ended question. Thanks for the link, I will go over it tomorrow.

[longstation]

Thanks for the comprehensive list. When I asked this question, I thought there's one solution. Never thought it could be so many.

[longstation]

Thanks for the help. This is what I later had in mind. But I think the answer using ".." may be what the bonus question was orignally intended so I marked it as solution. What a great community!