syntax for declaring an array type with variable size (known at compile time)?

Question

I'd like to create a struct that has a byte array, where a particular instance may have different sizes based on the creation of the struct known at compile time.

I've created a contrived example using a struct that has a byte representation of a floating point number with a separate type field. The working implementation below:

#![feature(float_to_from_bytes)]

#[derive(Debug)]
enum TypeMarker {
    NUMBER = 0x00,  // f64
    // BOOLEAN: u8 = 0x01, // bool
    // STRING: u8 = 0x02,  // UTF-8 string
}

#[derive(Debug)]
struct Value {
    t: TypeMarker,
    bytes: [u8; 8]
}

impl From<f64> for Value {
    fn from(v: f64) -> Self {
        Value {
            t: TypeMarker::NUMBER,
            bytes: v.to_be_bytes()
        }
    }
}

fn main() {
  let num = 4.0;
  println!("num = {:?}", num);

  let v1 = Value::from(4.0);
  println!("Value::from(4.0) = {:?}", v1);

  let v2:Value = num.into();
  println!("num.into() = {:?}", v2);

}

This working example (see also repo on github) uses rust nightly.

Running the example... cargo +nightly run --example into

produces the result I expect:

num = 4.0
Value::from(4.0) = Value { t: NUMBER, bytes: [64, 16, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0] }
num.into() = Value { t: NUMBER, bytes: [64, 16, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0] }

However, what I want to do is to support various types of numbers where the size is known at compile time. To illustrate this question, the example below adds impl From<i32> (which is 4 bytes long):

#![feature(float_to_from_bytes)]

#[derive(Debug)]
enum TypeMarker {
    NUMBER = 0x00,  // f64
    // BOOLEAN: u8 = 0x01, // bool
    // STRING: u8 = 0x02,  // UTF-8 string
}

#[derive(Debug)]
struct Value {
    t: TypeMarker,
    bytes: [u8; 8]
}

impl From<f64> for Value {
    fn from(v: f64) -> Self {
        Value {
            t: TypeMarker::NUMBER,
            bytes: v.to_be_bytes()
        }
    }
}

impl From<i32> for Value {
    fn from(v: i32) -> Self {
        Value {
            t: TypeMarker::NUMBER,
            bytes: v.to_be_bytes()
        }
    }
}


fn main() {
  let num = 4.0;
  println!("num = {:?}", num);

  let v1 = Value::from(4.0);
  println!("Value::from(4.0) = {:?}", v1);

  let v2:Value = num.into();
  println!("num.into() = {:?}", v2);

}

this produces the following error

error[E0308]: mismatched types
  --> examples/into.rs:33:20
   |
33 |             bytes: v.to_be_bytes()
   |                    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ expected an array with a fixed size of 8 elements, found one with 4 elements
   |
   = note: expected type `[u8; 8]`
              found type `[u8; 4]`

I would like to declare Value struct so that it can be created with variable sized arrays of bytes (where the size is known at compile time).

I've tried:

struct Value {
    t: TypeMarker,
    bytes: [u8; usize]
}

error[E0423]: expected value, found builtin type `usize`
  --> examples/into.rs:17:17
   |
17 |     bytes: [u8; usize]
   |                 ^^^^^ not a value

error[E0277]: arrays only have std trait implementations for lengths 0..=32
  --> examples/into.rs:17:5
   |
17 |     bytes: [u8; usize]
   |     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ the trait `std::array::LengthAtMost32` is not implemented for `[u8; _]`
   |
   = note: required because of the requirements on the impl of `std::fmt::Debug` for `[u8; _]`
   = note: required because of the requirements on the impl of `std::fmt::Debug` for `&[u8; _]`
   = note: required for the cast to the object type `dyn std::fmt::Debug`

So then I tried:

struct Value {
    t: TypeMarker,
    bytes: [u8; _]
}

that didn't work either:

error: expected expression, found reserved identifier `_`
  --> examples/into.rs:17:17
   |
17 |     bytes: [u8; _]
   |                 ^ expected expression

error: aborting due to previous error

This seems like it should be possible and I think I've read the syntax for this once, but I've re-read many sections of the Rust book and looked at dozens of other posts and can't quite seem to figure out the syntax.

Question: How to change bytes declaration to fix the example above that illustrates the error? And, if that is not supported or not idiomatic, what approach would work?

Rust's built-in array has to have a constant length, a size known at compile time that varies will not do. For that, you'll have to use growable array type Vec. But not all hopes are lost; RFC 2000 constant generics is to address this exact limitation. — edwardw
– edwardw, Commented Oct 11, 2019 at 16:49

Joel Macaluso · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-11 17:18:08Z

2

Array are allocated on the stack so it would be much easier to create a struct that has this property using the heap.

My suggestion is to either use a Vec for the bytes field

#[derive(Debug)]
struct Value {
    t: TypeMarker,
    bytes: Vec<u8>
}

or to use a boxed array:

#![feature(float_to_from_bytes)]

use std::boxed::Box;

#[derive(Debug)]
enum TypeMarker {
    NUMBER = 0x00,  // f64
    // BOOLEAN: u8 = 0x01, // bool
    // STRING: u8 = 0x02,  // UTF-8 string
}

#[derive(Debug)]
struct Value {
    t: TypeMarker,
    bytes: Box<[u8]>,
}

impl From<f64> for Value{
    fn from(v: f64) -> Self {
        Value {
            t: TypeMarker::NUMBER,
            bytes: Box::new(v.to_be_bytes()),
        }
    }
}

impl From<i32> for Value{
    fn from(v: i32) -> Self {
        Value {
            t: TypeMarker::NUMBER,
            bytes: Box::new(v.to_be_bytes()),
        }
    }
}


fn main() {
  let num = 4.0;
  println!("num = {:?}", num);

  let v1 = Value::from(4.0);
  println!("Value::from(4.0) = {:?}", v1);

  let v2:Value = num.into();
  println!("num.into() = {:?}", v2);

}

You can get some additional reading on using dynamically sized types here.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

answered Oct 11, 2019 at 17:18

Joel Macaluso

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1 Comment

Ultrasaurus Over a year ago

Appreciate the examples, since I'm still wrapping my brain around Rust syntax. For the first example, it seems I can set bytes field with v.to_be_bytes().to_vec() which compiles, so at least now I can play with some different implementations, even inefficient for many small numbers. Thx!

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