Rust Slice

Rust slice

Created By: chatGPT

In Rust, a slice is a view into a contiguous sequence of elements in a collection, allowing you to access a portion of that collection without copying it. Slices are represented by a reference to a block of memory, making them light-weight compared to full collections.

To create a slice, you can use the syntax &collection[start_index..end_index], where start_index is inclusive and end_index is exclusive. Slices can be used with arrays, vectors, and strings, and they provide a flexible way to work with parts of data.

Here’s an example of how to use slices with a vector and an array:

fn main() {
    let arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
    let slice_arr = &arr[1..4]; // slicing elements 1 to 3
    
    let vec = vec![10, 20, 30, 40, 50];
    let slice_vec = &vec[0..3]; // slicing the first three elements
    
    println!("Array slice: {:?}", slice_arr);
    println!("Vector slice: {:?}", slice_vec);
}

In this example, we create a slice from both an array and a vector. The output of the println! statements will display the sliced portions:

Array slice: [2, 3, 4] Vector slice: [10, 20, 30]

Slices are particularly useful for processing subsets of data without the overhead of allocating new collections. They're also commonly used in function parameters to allow functions to accept a reference to a slice instead of a whole collection, enhancing performance and safety.

fn print_slice(slice: &[i32]) {
    for &item in slice {
        println!("{}", item);
    }
}

fn main() {
    let numbers = [5, 10, 15, 20, 25];
    let slice = &numbers[1..4];
    print_slice(slice);
}