How impl same trait for different bound

help
1

Playground: Rust Playground

Code:

trait A{}

trait B{}

trait C{}

impl<T> A for T where T:B {}

impl<T> A for T where T:C {}
2

What if T implements both B and C? That's why it's not currently possible to do this.

3

Maybe should throw compile error when a struct implements both B and C? This is very helpful for us to eliminate some duplicate code.

1 Like
4

That would make it impossible to implement a trait for a type, which is a backwards-compatible change. This has been thorough thought out by others in the past.

5

I don't think it's that easy to say that it couldn't be possible. All three traits are local to the same crate. It's already impossible for downstream users to implement both A and B if there's a blanket implementation

impl<T> A for T where T:B {}

I don't see a much different situation here for B and C if OPʼs code was to be allowed. And I personally hope that Rust will eventually allow patterns like that. But of course, please feel free to reference those instances of this question being “thorough[ly] thought out by others in the past” in case I'm missing something.

One tremendously useful aspect of allowing this: you could more or less think of B and C as different kinds of type-checked “templates” for implementing A. This can save a lot of boilerplate code sometimes. And even if for some reason we can never support this with ordinary traits B and C, there could be use in a new feature that introduces some “type-checked trait implementation” templates for this reason. Kind of like multiple sets of default implementations for trait methods that you can choose from.

3 Likes
6

The rules around Type Alias Impl Traits have that the generic arguments must all be unique generic arguments from the surrounding scope for type-inference to work properly after type-checking. It's to avoid ambiguity

7

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