Logo

Developer learning path

News
Rust

Slices in Rust

Introduction to Rust Programming Language
What is Rust? Advantages of Rust History of Rust Installing Rust
Basics of Rust Programming Language
Data Types Variables and Constants Operators Control Flow
Ownership in Rust
What is Ownership? Borrowing and References Slices Memory Management in Rust Garbage Collection in Rust Drop Trait
Functions and Closures in Rust
Defining and Calling Functions Function Parameters and Return Values Closures Higher Order Functions
Structs and Enums in Rust
Structs Defining Structs Tuple Structs Struct Methods Enums Defining Enums Associated Data Enums as Structs
Traits and Generics in Rust
Traits Defining Traits Trait Objects Implementing Traits Generics Defining Generics Trait Bounds Advanced Lifetimes
Concurrency in Rust
What is Concurrency? Threads Creating Threads Communication Between Threads Message Passing Sync and Send Traits Mutexes and Atomic Types Channels
Error Handling in Rust
What are Errors? Panic Result Enum Unwrapping Results Propagating Errors Combinators
Testing and Debugging in Rust
Debugging Rust Code Writing Tests in Rust Unit Tests Integration Tests Running Tests Test Filters Test Options
Advanced Topics in Rust
Unsafe Rust Macros FFI Cargo Rust Standard Library Collections File IO Networking
Rust Applications
Developing Rust Application Rust Web Development Building GUI Applications using Rust
Conclusion
Recap of Rust Programming Language Future of Rust Programming Language.

Slices

42

#description

Slices in Rust are a way of working with a subset, or portion, of an existing array or other collection. They allow you to reference a contiguous sequence of elements within the larger collection without creating a new copy of those elements.

In other words, slices are like windows into an array or string, giving you access to specific elements or substrings without having to copy the entire data structure.

To create a slice, you simply define the range of indices that you want to reference within the original collection.

Here is an example:

 
                    
let arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
let slice = &arr[2..4];

In this example, we create a slice that references elements 2 and 3 of the arr array. Notice that we use the & operator to create a reference to the slice, rather than copying it to a new variable.

Slices are commonly used in Rust code, especially when working with large data structures where copying data could be expensive in terms of memory and processing time.

In addition to ranges, slices can also be created using pointers and lengths or using the .. range syntax to reference from the beginning or end of a collection.

Overall, slices offer a powerful and efficient way to work with collections of data in Rust.

March 27, 2023

If you don't quite understand a paragraph in the lecture, just click on it and you can ask questions about it.

If you don't understand the whole question, click on the buttons below to get a new version of the explanation, practical examples, or to critique the question itself.