Arrays and Slices - Rust By Example
Description: A description

# Arrays and Slices

An array is a collection of objects of the same type `T`, stored in contiguous memory. Arrays are created using brackets `[]`, and their size, which is known at compile time, is part of their type signature `[T; size]`.

Slices are similar to arrays, but their size is not known at compile time. Instead, a slice is a two-word object, the first word is a pointer to the data, and the second word is the length of the slice. The word size is the same as usize, determined by the processor architecture eg 64 bits on an x86-64. Slices can be used to borrow a section of an array, and have the type signature `&[T]`.

    use std::mem;

    // This function borrows a slice
    fn analyze_slice(slice: &[i32]) {
        println!("first element of the slice: {}", slice[0]);
        println!("the slice has {} elements", slice.len());
    }

    fn main() {
        // Fixed-size array (type signature is superfluous)
        let xs: [i32; 5] = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

        // All elements can be initialized to the same value
        let ys: [i32; 500] = [0; 500];

        // Indexing starts at 0
        println!("first element of the array: {}", xs[0]);
        println!("second element of the array: {}", xs[1]);

        // `len` returns the size of the array
        println!("array size: {}", xs.len());

        // Arrays are stack allocated
        println!("array occupies {} bytes", mem::size_of_val(&xs));

        // Arrays can be automatically borrowed as slices
        println!("borrow the whole array as a slice");
        analyze_slice(&xs);

        // Slices can point to a section of an array
        // They are of the form [starting_index..ending_index]
        // starting_index is the first position in the slice
        // ending_index is one more than the last position in the slice
        println!("borrow a section of the array as a slice");
        analyze_slice(&ys[1 .. 4]);

        // Out of bound indexing causes compile error
        println!("{}", xs[5]);
    }