On Monday, 30 June 2014 at 17:28:06 UTC, Ary Borenszweig wrote:
On 6/30/14, 1:50 PM, Nick Treleaven wrote:
Hi,
This recent proposal looks like it might clean up typical Rust
function
What are those 'a all over the place? I never understood them
:-(
Those are lifetimes, which are a part of the Rust type annotation
machinery. The syntax is borrowed (pun intended ;-) from ML
family languages, which use type variables like 'a, 'b, 'c
(pronounced "alpha", "beta", "gamma", or "tick a", tick b", "tick
c") to express parametric polymorphism.
Rather than try to explain Rust's lifetimes, I'll point you here
http://rustbyexample.com/lifetime.html
Rust is still undergoing development, and the lifetime syntax is
a bit noisy, so it may change, but the rustbyexample page has
been following the Rust nightly builds closely. It's an
interesting language, and the Mozilla backing really helps it,
but I find D and Nimrod easier to use right now.
