blob: 49de68269a5fb8047b000294591256081bdf21dc [file] [log] [blame] [view] [edit]
## Processing a Series of Items with Iterators
The iterator pattern allows you to perform some task on a sequence of items in
turn. An iterator is responsible for the logic of iterating over each item and
determining when the sequence has finished. When you use iterators, you dont
have to reimplement that logic yourself.
In Rust, iterators are _lazy_, meaning they have no effect until you call
methods that consume the iterator to use it up. For example, the code in Listing
13-10 creates an iterator over the items in the vector `v1` by calling the
`iter` method defined on `Vec<T>`. This code by itself doesnt do anything
useful.
<Listing number="13-10" file-name="src/main.rs" caption="Creating an iterator">
```rust
{{#rustdoc_include ../listings/ch13-functional-features/listing-13-10/src/main.rs:here}}
```
</Listing>
The iterator is stored in the `v1_iter` variable. Once weve created an
iterator, we can use it in a variety of ways. In Listing 3-5 in Chapter 3, we
iterated over an array using a `for` loop to execute some code on each of its
items. Under the hood this implicitly created and then consumed an iterator, but
we glossed over how exactly that works until now.
In the example in Listing 13-11, we separate the creation of the iterator from
the use of the iterator in the `for` loop. When the `for` loop is called using
the iterator in `v1_iter`, each element in the iterator is used in one iteration
of the loop, which prints out each value.
<Listing number="13-11" file-name="src/main.rs" caption="Using an iterator in a `for` loop">
```rust
{{#rustdoc_include ../listings/ch13-functional-features/listing-13-11/src/main.rs:here}}
```
</Listing>
In languages that dont have iterators provided by their standard libraries, you
would likely write this same functionality by starting a variable at index 0,
using that variable to index into the vector to get a value, and incrementing
the variable value in a loop until it reached the total number of items in the
vector.
Iterators handle all that logic for you, cutting down on repetitive code you
could potentially mess up. Iterators give you more flexibility to use the same
logic with many different kinds of sequences, not just data structures you can
index into, like vectors. Lets examine how iterators do that.
### The `Iterator` Trait and the `next` Method
All iterators implement a trait named `Iterator` that is defined in the standard
library. The definition of the trait looks like this:
```rust
pub trait Iterator {
type Item;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item>;
// methods with default implementations elided
}
```
Notice this definition uses some new syntax: `type Item` and `Self::Item`, which
are defining an _associated type_ with this trait. Well talk about associated
types in depth in Chapter 20. For now, all you need to know is that this code
says implementing the `Iterator` trait requires that you also define an `Item`
type, and this `Item` type is used in the return type of the `next` method. In
other words, the `Item` type will be the type returned from the iterator.
The `Iterator` trait only requires implementors to define one method: the `next`
method, which returns one item of the iterator at a time wrapped in `Some` and,
when iteration is over, returns `None`.
We can call the `next` method on iterators directly; Listing 13-12 demonstrates
what values are returned from repeated calls to `next` on the iterator created
from the vector.
<Listing number="13-12" file-name="src/lib.rs" caption="Calling the `next` method on an iterator">
```rust,noplayground
{{#rustdoc_include ../listings/ch13-functional-features/listing-13-12/src/lib.rs:here}}
```
</Listing>
Note that we needed to make `v1_iter` mutable: calling the `next` method on an
iterator changes internal state that the iterator uses to keep track of where it
is in the sequence. In other words, this code _consumes_, or uses up, the
iterator. Each call to `next` eats up an item from the iterator. We didnt need
to make `v1_iter` mutable when we used a `for` loop because the loop took
ownership of `v1_iter` and made it mutable behind the scenes.
Also note that the values we get from the calls to `next` are immutable
references to the values in the vector. The `iter` method produces an iterator
over immutable references. If we want to create an iterator that takes ownership
of `v1` and returns owned values, we can call `into_iter` instead of `iter`.
Similarly, if we want to iterate over mutable references, we can call `iter_mut`
instead of `iter`.
### Methods that Consume the Iterator
The `Iterator` trait has a number of different methods with default
implementations provided by the standard library; you can find out about these
methods by looking in the standard library API documentation for the `Iterator`
trait. Some of these methods call the `next` method in their definition, which
is why youre required to implement the `next` method when implementing the
`Iterator` trait.
Methods that call `next` are called _consuming adapters_, because calling them
uses up the iterator. One example is the `sum` method, which takes ownership of
the iterator and iterates through the items by repeatedly calling `next`, thus
consuming the iterator. As it iterates through, it adds each item to a running
total and returns the total when iteration is complete. Listing 13-13 has a test
illustrating a use of the `sum` method:
<Listing number="13-13" file-name="src/lib.rs" caption="Calling the `sum` method to get the total of all items in the iterator">
```rust,noplayground
{{#rustdoc_include ../listings/ch13-functional-features/listing-13-13/src/lib.rs:here}}
```
</Listing>
We arent allowed to use `v1_iter` after the call to `sum` because `sum` takes
ownership of the iterator we call it on.
### Methods that Produce Other Iterators
_Iterator adapters_ are methods defined on the `Iterator` trait that dont
consume the iterator. Instead, they produce different iterators by changing some
aspect of the original iterator.
Listing 13-14 shows an example of calling the iterator adapter method `map`,
which takes a closure to call on each item as the items are iterated through.
The `map` method returns a new iterator that produces the modified items. The
closure here creates a new iterator in which each item from the vector will be
incremented by 1:
<Listing number="13-14" file-name="src/main.rs" caption="Calling the iterator adapter `map` to create a new iterator">
```rust,not_desired_behavior
{{#rustdoc_include ../listings/ch13-functional-features/listing-13-14/src/main.rs:here}}
```
</Listing>
However, this code produces a warning:
```console
{{#include ../listings/ch13-functional-features/listing-13-14/output.txt}}
```
The code in Listing 13-14 doesnt do anything; the closure weve specified never
gets called. The warning reminds us why: iterator adapters are lazy, and we need
to consume the iterator here.
To fix this warning and consume the iterator, well use the `collect` method,
which we used in Chapter 12 with `env::args` in Listing 12-1. This method
consumes the iterator and collects the resulting values into a collection data
type.
In Listing 13-15, we collect the results of iterating over the iterator thats
returned from the call to `map` into a vector. This vector will end up
containing each item from the original vector incremented by 1.
<Listing number="13-15" file-name="src/main.rs" caption="Calling the `map` method to create a new iterator and then calling the `collect` method to consume the new iterator and create a vector">
```rust
{{#rustdoc_include ../listings/ch13-functional-features/listing-13-15/src/main.rs:here}}
```
</Listing>
Because `map` takes a closure, we can specify any operation we want to perform
on each item. This is a great example of how closures let you customize some
behavior while reusing the iteration behavior that the `Iterator` trait
provides.
You can chain multiple calls to iterator adapters to perform complex actions in
a readable way. But because all iterators are lazy, you have to call one of the
consuming adapter methods to get results from calls to iterator adapters.
### Using Closures that Capture Their Environment
Many iterator adapters take closures as arguments, and commonly the closures
well specify as arguments to iterator adapters will be closures that capture
their environment.
For this example, well use the `filter` method that takes a closure. The
closure gets an item from the iterator and returns a `bool`. If the closure
returns `true`, the value will be included in the iteration produced by
`filter`. If the closure returns `false`, the value wont be included.
In Listing 13-16, we use `filter` with a closure that captures the `shoe_size`
variable from its environment to iterate over a collection of `Shoe` struct
instances. It will return only shoes that are the specified size.
<Listing number="13-16" file-name="src/lib.rs" caption="Using the `filter` method with a closure that captures `shoe_size`">
```rust,noplayground
{{#rustdoc_include ../listings/ch13-functional-features/listing-13-16/src/lib.rs}}
```
</Listing>
The `shoes_in_size` function takes ownership of a vector of shoes and a shoe
size as parameters. It returns a vector containing only shoes of the specified
size.
In the body of `shoes_in_size`, we call `into_iter` to create an iterator that
takes ownership of the vector. Then we call `filter` to adapt that iterator into
a new iterator that only contains elements for which the closure returns `true`.
The closure captures the `shoe_size` parameter from the environment and compares
the value with each shoes size, keeping only shoes of the size specified.
Finally, calling `collect` gathers the values returned by the adapted iterator
into a vector thats returned by the function.
The test shows that when we call `shoes_in_size`, we get back only shoes that
have the same size as the value we specified.