X-Git-Url: https://git.ralfj.de/web.git/blobdiff_plain/1c5b5ee58a76f4dbcb0d6d5603f13df991b274a5..6685b789a5848eb39ae403a8f67155aea1874556:/personal/_posts/2018-04-05-a-formal-look-at-pinning.md?ds=sidebyside diff --git a/personal/_posts/2018-04-05-a-formal-look-at-pinning.md b/personal/_posts/2018-04-05-a-formal-look-at-pinning.md index 0093a21..2e72c2a 100644 --- a/personal/_posts/2018-04-05-a-formal-look-at-pinning.md +++ b/personal/_posts/2018-04-05-a-formal-look-at-pinning.md @@ -47,16 +47,18 @@ Data is only pinned after a `Pin` pointing to it has been created; it can be The [corresponding RFC](https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/2349-pin.md) explains the entirey new API surface in quite some detail: [`Pin`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/std/mem/struct.Pin.html), [`PinBox`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/std/boxed/struct.PinBox.html) and the [`Unpin`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/nightly/std/marker/trait.Unpin.html) marker trait. I will not repeat that here but only show one example of how to use `Pin` references and exploit their guarantees: {% highlight rust %} -#![feature(pin, arbitrary_self_types)] +#![feature(pin, arbitrary_self_types, optin_builtin_traits)] use std::ptr; use std::mem::Pin; use std::boxed::PinBox; +use std::marker::Unpin; struct SelfReferential { data: i32, self_ref: *const i32, } +impl !Unpin for SelfReferential {} impl SelfReferential { fn new() -> SelfReferential { @@ -316,7 +318,7 @@ forall |ptr| T.pin(ptr) -> (exists |bytes| ptr.points_to_owned(bytes) && T.own(b Note that this is exactly the inverse direction of axiom (b) added in definition 2b: For `Unpin` types, we can freely move between the owned and pinned typestate. -Clearly, `SelfReferential` is *not* `Unpin`. +Clearly, `SelfReferential` is *not* `Unpin`, and the example code above makes that explicit with an `impl !Unpin`. On the other hand, for types like `i32`, their pinned typestate invariant `i32.pin(ptr)` will only care about the memory that `ptr` points to and not about the actual value of `ptr`, so they satisfy the `Unpin` axiom. With this definition at hand, it should be clear that if we assume `T: Unpin`, then `&'a mut T` and `Pin<'a, T>` are equivalent types, and so are `Box` and `PinBox`. @@ -335,7 +337,7 @@ The latter is crucial, because it means we can automatically derive `Unpin` inst ## Conclusion -We have seen how the new `Pin` type can be used to give safe APIs to types like `SelfReferential`, and how we can (semi-)formally argue for the correctness of `SelfReferential` and the methods on `Pin` and `PinBox`. +We have seen how the new `Pin` type can be used to give safe APIs to types like `SelfReferential` (which, previously, was not possible), and how we can (semi-)formally argue for the correctness of `SelfReferential` and the methods on `Pin` and `PinBox`. I hope I was able to shed some light both on how pinning is useful, and how we can reason about safety of a typed API in general. Next time, we are going to look at an extension to the pinning API proposed by @cramertj which guarantees that `drop` will be called under some circumstances, and how that is useful for intrusive collections.