Strings
There are two types of strings in Rust: String and &str.
A String is stored as a vector of bytes (Vec<u8>), but guaranteed to always be a valid UTF-8 sequence. String is heap allocated, growable and not null terminated.
&str is a slice (&[u8]) that always points to a valid UTF-8 sequence, and can be used to view into a String, just like &[T] is a view into Vec<T>.
fn main() {
// (all the type annotations are superfluous)
// A reference to a string allocated in read only memory
let pangram: &'static str = "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
println!("Pangram: {}", pangram);
// Iterate over words in reverse, no new string is allocated
println!("Words in reverse");
for word in pangram.split_whitespace().rev() {
println!("> {}", word);
}
// Copy chars into a vector, sort and remove duplicates
let mut chars: Vec<char> = pangram.chars().collect();
chars.sort();
chars.dedup();
// Create an empty and growable `String`
let mut string = String::new();
for c in chars {
// Insert a char at the end of string
string.push(c);
// Insert a string at the end of string
string.push_str(", ");
}
// The trimmed string is a slice to the original string, hence no new
// allocation is performed
let chars_to_trim: &[char] = &[' ', ','];
let trimmed_str: &str = string.trim_matches(chars_to_trim);
println!("Used characters: {}", trimmed_str);
// Heap allocate a string
let alice = String::from("I like dogs");
// Allocate new memory and store the modified string there
let bob: String = alice.replace("dog", "cat");
println!("Alice says: {}", alice);
println!("Bob says: {}", bob);
}
More str/String methods can be found under the std::str and std::string modules
Literals and escapes
There are multiple ways to write string literals with special characters in them. All result in a similar &str so it's best to use the form that is the most convenient to write. Similarly there are multiple ways to write byte string literals, which all result in &[u8; N].
Generally special characters are escaped with a backslash character: \. This way you can add any character to your string, even unprintable ones and ones that you don't know how to type. If you want a literal backslash, escape it with another one: \\
String or character literal delimiters occurring within a literal must be escaped: "\"", '\''.
fn main() {
// You can use escapes to write bytes by their hexadecimal values...
let byte_escape = "I'm writing \x52\x75\x73\x74!";
println!("What are you doing\x3F (\\x3F means ?) {}", byte_escape);
// ...or Unicode code points.
let unicode_codepoint = "\u{211D}";
let character_name = "\"DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL R\"";
println!("Unicode character {} (U+211D) is called {}",
unicode_codepoint, character_name );
let long_string = "String literals
can span multiple lines.
The linebreak and indentation here ->\
<- can be escaped too!";
println!("{}", long_string);
}
Sometimes there are just too many characters that need to be escaped or it's just much more convenient to write a string out as-is. This is where raw string literals come into play.
fn main() {
let raw_str = r"Escapes don't work here: \x3F \u{211D}";
println!("{}", raw_str);
// If you need quotes in a raw string, add a pair of #s
let quotes = r#"And then I said: "There is no escape!""#;
println!("{}", quotes);
// If you need "## in your string, just use more #s in the delimiter.
// You can use up to 65535 #s.
let longer_delimiter = r###"A string with "## in it. And even "##!"###;
println!("{}", longer_delimiter);
}
Want a string that's not UTF-8? (Remember, str and String must be valid UTF-8). Or maybe you want an array of bytes that's mostly text? Byte strings to the rescue!
use std::str;
fn main() {
// Note that this is not actually a `&str`
let bytestring: &[u8; 21] = b"this is a byte string";
// Byte arrays don't have the `Display` trait, so printing them is a bit limited
println!("A byte string: {:?}", bytestring);
// Byte strings can have byte escapes...
let escaped = b"\x52\x75\x73\x74 as bytes";
// ...but no unicode escapes
// let escaped = b"\u{211D} is not allowed";
println!("Some escaped bytes: {:?}", escaped);
// Raw byte strings work just like raw strings
let raw_bytestring = br"\u{211D} is not escaped here";
println!("{:?}", raw_bytestring);
// Converting a byte array to `str` can fail
if let Ok(my_str) = str::from_utf8(raw_bytestring) {
println!("And the same as text: '{}'", my_str);
}
let _quotes = br#"You can also use "fancier" formatting, \
like with normal raw strings"#;
// Byte strings don't have to be UTF-8
let shift_jis = b"\x82\xe6\x82\xa8\x82\xb1\x82\xbb"; // "ようこそ" in SHIFT-JIS
// But then they can't always be converted to `str`
match str::from_utf8(shift_jis) {
Ok(my_str) => println!("Conversion successful: '{}'", my_str),
Err(e) => println!("Conversion failed: {:?}", e),
};
}
For conversions between character encodings check out the encoding crate.
A more detailed listing of the ways to write string literals and escape characters is given in the 'Tokens' chapter of the Rust Reference.
