Return reference to data inside refcell?

1

Hello,
I have a RefCell<Vec<T>>, and I'm trying to find a way to return a reference (ideally an &, but Ref<T> works too) to an element at a given index inside the vector. I've seen things like this and this, but I'm unsure on how to adapt it to a situation where I have to return a reference to an element inside a vector.

2 
use std::cell::{RefCell, Ref};

fn index(vec: &RefCell<Vec<T>>, index: usize) -> Ref<T> {
    let vec = vec.borrow();
    Ref::map(vec, |x| &x[index])
}

You can do something similar with RefMut if you need it.

6 Likes
3

Thanks!

4

Is there any way I can get a reference (not a "Ref", but an "&") out of that?

1 Like
5

If you try this, then the point of RefCell is broken. The reason we return a Ref<'a, T> instead of &T is that without giving the caller a Ref, the lock on the RefCell will be broken before the reference is dropped. Think of a RefCell like a mutex:
If you call .lock on it, you want to make sure noone else can touch the data inside, therefore returning a reference from .lock would have no way to tell the Mutex that it's okay to unlock it.

2 Likes
6

Oh, OK, makes sense. Thanks!

7

Note that if you're the sole owner of that RefCell, you can use get_mut to get an unguarded reference to the underlying data.

8

Yeah, I'm not the sole owner of the refcell. The map approach worked, though (krishnasannasi's approach)

9

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