//@ `[T]` is the type of an (unsized) *array*, with elements of type `T`. All this means is that there's a contiguous
//@ region of memory, where a bunch of `T` are stored. How many? We can't tell! This is an unsized type. Just like for
//@ trait objects, this means we can only operate on pointers to that type, and these pointers will carry the missing
-//@ information - namely, the length. Such a pointer is called a *slice*. As we will see, a slice can be split.
-//@ Our function can thus take a borrowed slice, and promise to sort all elements in there.
+//@ information - namely, the length (they will be *fat pointers*). Such a reference to an array is called a *slice*. As we will see, a slice can be split.
+//@ Our function can thus take a mutable slice, and promise to sort all elements in there.
pub fn sort<T: PartialOrd>(data: &mut [T]) {
if data.len() < 2 { return; }
// Finally, we split our slice to sort the two halves. The nice part about slices is that splitting them is cheap:
//@ They are just a pointer to a start address, and a length. We can thus get two pointers, one at the beginning and
//@ one in the middle, and set the lengths appropriately such that they don't overlap. This is what `split_at_mut` does.
- //@ Since the two slices don't overlap, there is no aliasing and we can have them both mutably borrowed.
+ //@ Since the two slices don't overlap, there is no aliasing and we can have both of them as unique, mutable slices.
let (part1, part2) = data.split_at_mut(lpos);
//@ The index operation can not only be used to address certain elements, it can also be used for *slicing*: Giving a range
//@ of indices, and obtaining an appropriate part of the slice we started with. Here, we remove the last element from
// We also import some other pieces that we will need.
extern crate docopt;
use self::docopt::Docopt;
- use part12::{run, Options, OutputMode};
+ use part13::{run, Options, OutputMode};
use std::process;
// The `USAGE` string documents how the program is to be called. It's written in a format that `docopt` can parse.
//@ encoded string, that is, a bunch of bytes in memory (`[u8]`) that are valid according of UTF-8. `str` is unsized. `&str`
//@ stores the address of the character data, and their length. String literals like "this one" are
//@ of type `&'static str`: They point right to the constant section of the binary, so
- //@ However, the borrow is valid for as long as the program runs, hence it has lifetime `'static`. Calling
- //@ `to_string` will copy the string data into an owned buffer on the heap, and thus convert it to `String`.
+ //@ the reference is valid for the entire program. The bytes pointed to by `pattern`, on the other hand, are owned by someone else,
+ //@ and we call `to_string` on it to copy the string data into a buffer on the heap that we own.
let mode = if count {
OutputMode::Count
} else if sort {
// the pattern to regular-expression mode, and change `filter_lines` to honor this option. The documentation of regex is available from its crates.io site.
// (You won't be able to use the `regex!` macro if you are on the stable or beta channel of Rust. But it wouldn't help for our use-case anyway.)
-//@ [index](main.html) | [previous](part13.html) | [raw source](https://www.ralfj.de/git/rust-101.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/workspace/src/part14.rs) | [next](part15.html)
+//@ [index](main.html) | [previous](part13.html) | [raw source](workspace/src/part14.rs) | [next](part15.html)