Pointer arithmetic like in C?

help
1

Hi,

Does Rust programming language have pointer arithmetic similar to C?

Please comment. Thanks in advance.

Best Regards,

Kaushal

2

I moved your question to a new topic.

Pointer arithmetic exists in unsafe code when working with raw pointers, but it is generally not used in safe Rust.

3

Kind of, sort of. You will have to make use of the "unsafe" keyword to do it. It's not required in typical applications programming.

I suspect reading the Rust Book will answer your question better:
https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

Or see Rust By Example: Unsafe Operations - Rust By Example

Or if you want to get more serious read: " Learn Rust With Entirely Too Many Linked Lists": Introduction - Learning Rust With Entirely Too Many Linked Lists

4

See add and offset and friends. As you can see, they are themselves unsafe.

Indexing (or iterators) take care of most C use-cases for you; additionally, the default layout of structs is not guaranteed. So while pointer arithmetic may be going on behind the curtain in some cases, the typical Rust program will be working at a safer abstraction layer that uses references and not raw pointers.

1 Like
5

Typically instead of pointer arithmetic, Rust uses slices and ranges.

buf++;

in Rust is:

buf = &buf[1..];

This has the advantage that slices keep track of their length, and won't let you go past the end.

1 Like
6

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. We invite you to open a new topic if you have further questions or comments.