Two things that seem useful but I don't understand very well: lazy_static and const_fn.
They are both interesting in that they seem to "generalize raw const". However, I'm not sure how they compare / are related (if at all).
EDIT: Can anyone enlighten lazy_static vs const_fn ?
One challenge you run into when creating constants is that it can be difficult to correctly initialize it to the value you want, because Rust does not allow initialization code that runs before main which you may be used to in C++. It has to be able to figure out the value at compile time.
Basically in order to call a function when initializing a constant, it must be const. This means that the compiler knows how to run it at compile time, so it can hard code the result in the exe file. The const_fn feature is a compiler feature that allows declaring a few more functions as const than currently possible in stable Rust.
Lazy static is a crate that provides a macro that allows you to make a constant which is initialized the first time you use it, which sidesteps the difficulties with initialization.
Dumb Question: Can const_fn construct objects that use Box/Rc/ heap allocated memory?
I know what "lisp Run at compile time" means, but have no mental model of how "Rust run at compile time" means.
Another clarification question. Which one of the following is true:
(1) any value that const_fn can construct can also be constructed via macro_rules / procedural macros
(2) there is some value that we can construct via const_fn that we can't via macro_rules / procedural macros. (If so, what is an example)
No, you can't allocate memory in const code because it is not possible to hardcode the constant in the executable as the data in the executable does not lie on the heap.
Basically const evaluation uses MIR which can emulate the rustc internal representation of Rust. There are quite a few checks on what you can do currently as they need to be very sure it's being implemented correctly. You can't even use if, match or any kind of loop in a const function.
As for things you can do with a const fn but not with a macro: If a struct has a private field but a const fn constructor, you can still create a constant of that type using the constructor, but you couldn't just type out the value because the field is private. playground
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