#interior-mutability #cell #unsafecell

no-std near-safe-cell

A more ergonomic 'UnsafeCell' wrapper/replacement

6 releases

0.1.5 May 4, 2022
0.1.4 Sep 21, 2021

#1441 in Rust patterns

MIT/Apache

14KB
251 lines

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NearSafeCell, a more ergonomic UnsafeCell wrapper/replacement.

Rational:

The standard UnsafeCell-Api isn't great to work with in some situations.

  • You have no way to get a &T from an &UnsafeCell<T> without using the trivially and always safe unsafe{ &*cell.get() };.
  • UnsafeCell::get returns a &mut T, which has to be unsafely de- and re-referenced to use anyway, so why not just return a reference and make the function itself unsafe?
  • UnsafeCell::get is named confusingly and inconsistently with itself and the rest of the standard library - it should really be called UnsafeCell::get_mut_ptr.
  • If you do actually just need a pointer (e.g. as a map key) you could simple use &self as *const T. No need for an UnsafeCell at all.

Usage:

use near_safe_cell::NearSafeCell;

// Implements 'Default'
let mut cell: NearSafeCell<usize> = NearSafeCell::default();
cell = NearSafeCell::new(24);

// Implements all Formatting traits
assert_eq!(format!("{:b}", cell), "11000");
assert_eq!(format!("{:?}", cell), "NearSafeCell(24)");

// Implements 'AsRef', 'AsMut', 'Deref' and 'DerefMut'
assert_eq!(cell.as_ref(), &24);
assert_eq!(cell.as_mut(), &mut 24);
assert_eq!(&*cell, &24);
assert_eq!(&mut *cell, &mut 24);

// You can still get pointers.
let const_ptr: *const usize = cell.get_ptr(); // &self
let mut_ptr: *mut usize = cell.get_mut_ptr(); // &self

// Safety: 'interiorly_mutable' is dropped before retrieving 'shared'.
let interiorly_mutable: &mut usize = unsafe{ cell.get_mut_unsafe() }; // &self
assert_eq!(interiorly_mutable, &mut 24);
*interiorly_mutable = 42;
drop(interiorly_mutable);

// Multiple shared references.
let shared: &usize = cell.get(); // &self
let shared2: &usize = cell.get(); // &self
assert_eq!(shared, &42);
assert_eq!(shared, shared2);

// One mutable reference.
let mutable: &mut usize = cell.get_mut(); // &mut self
assert_eq!(mutable, &mut 42);
*mutable = 242;

// Consuming the cell to get the value.
let value: usize = cell.unwrap(); // self
assert_eq!(value, 242);

No runtime deps