How to set the max size for a string?

[synn]

As String is stored on the heap, because it's size is not known, can I define a type where I know the maximum size of a given string.
Say I know that the size of a String won't be more than 255 characters, how can I set this? Because instead of dynamic allocation of the size (which may have some performance penalty), how can I manually set the max size of a String. Also, would this approach provide some performance benefit? (I do understand that String is a recursive type)
Any help is really appreciated.

[RustyYato]

You can't set a hard max size, but you can pre-allocate some memory either using String::reserve or initially with String::with_capacity

@synn

(I do understand that String is a recursive type)

This isn't true in Rust. String is backed by Vec which is just a block of memory.

[synn]

How would an in-struct definition look like?

[alice]

Just like any other string. The difference is the use of constructor.

[cuviper]

There's no type-level way to specify this String limit in the struct. You can only deal with the capacity at runtime.

The arrayvec crate has ArrayString which would have a hard limit. You could use Box<ArrayString> if you still want it in the heap.

[synn]

Would that have any perf improvement over just using String?

[kornel]

If you don't need to grow the string, then in some cases Box<str> is faster, because it doesn't have to track capacity.

[cuviper]

ArrayString tracks capacity by constant, which could generate faster code than String when doing anything that needs to check capacity. ArrayString also holds its entire capacity as a local array, which could be good (no allocator) or bad (possibly expensive to move), but that's moot if you Box it. Otherwise I would expect performance similar to String, as the rest of the API for both mostly comes from Deref to str.