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Ergonomic tagged pointer

Enum Ptr

crates.io docs.rs

0.2.0 beta is released with a lot of new features. I need feedback from community.

This crate provides a custom derive macro EnumPtr to generate bridges between an enum T and Compact<T> with minimum cost. Compact<T> is the compact representation of T, and it is only one pointer wide.

For example, the following code

use enum_ptr::EnumPtr;

#[derive(EnumPtr)]
#[repr(C, usize)]
enum Foo<'a> {
    A(&'a i32),
    B(Box<i32>),
}

will generate

impl<'a> From<Foo<'a>> for Compact<Foo<'a>> {
    // ...
}

impl<'a> From<Compact<Foo<'a>>> for Foo<'a> {
    // ...
}

Since &i32 and Box<i32> are aligned by 4 bytes, the lowest 2 bits of them are always zeros. Compact<Foo<'a>> utilizes these bits to store the tag (discriminant).

Features

  • No need to write unsafe pointer operations
  • Supports various types and can be extended
  • Supports no_std
  • Minimum type conversion cost
  • Passes cargo +nightly miri test with strict provenance enabled.

Testing

$ cargo test
$ cargo +nightly miri test

Credits

  • Thanks to @oxalica for reviewing this crate and providing a lot of helpful suggestions.

License

This project is licensed under either of

at your option.