Struct fields and ownership reassignment

help
1

I have a use case where I want to transition from one struct type into another, moving data to the new place. My guess is that no copy should be involved since I just transfer ownership of fields, though I am a little puzzled about how new struct will be able to build it's memory layout without copying?

struct Topic {
    pub name: String,
    pub topic: String
}
#[derive(Debug)]
struct IndexedTopic {
    index: u32,
    name: String,
    topic: String
}
impl Topic {
    pub fn index(self, index: u32) -> IndexedTopic {
        IndexedTopic {
            name: self.name,
            topic: self.topic,
            index
        }
    }
}

fn main() {
    let topic = Topic { name: "foo".to_owned(), topic: "bar".to_owned() };
    dbg!(topic.index(1));
}
2

You could do this:

struct Topic {
    pub name: String,
    pub topic: String
}

struct IndexedTopic {
    index: u32,
    topic: Topic,
}

so that you don't have to copy the fields manually

3

Thanks @RustyYato, I actually wanted to understand if in my case compiler will perform memory copy or new struct will be created without copying. I was not able to find answer on this question in the nomicon.

4

The only way to check that is looking at the assembly :slight_smile:

But copying 6 usizes should almost never be an issue

1 Like
5

Oh, it just occurred to me that your worried about copying the strings. Moving a String will just copy the pointer and two usizes, not the actual string.

6

Ah, right!

7

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.