Lifetime Elision link

• What Is Lifetime Elision?

Some common coding patterns were identified and annotating them was an extra effort. In order to avoid that overhead, Rust allows lifetimes to be elided or omitted. This is known as lifetime elision. Rust does so by designing rules for omitting lifetime annotation. They are tested at compile time and are used to determine a lifetime.

• Lifetime Ellison can appear in two ways:

  • An input lifetime is a lifetime associated with a parameter of a function.

     fn fun_name<'a>( x : & 'a i32);  
    

  Here, the input lifetime of x is ‘a.

• An output lifetime is a lifetime associated with the return value of a function.

   fn fun_name<'a>() -> & 'a i32;  
  

Here, the output lifetime of return value is ‘a.

Note: A function can have both input and output lifetimes.

  Note: A function can have both input and output lifetimes.
  

Here, the x has the input lifetime and the return value has the output lifetime.

Rules for Elision link

Rule 1 link

Each input parameter gets its own lifetime. If the lifetime is not specified, then the lifetime of each parameter is different.

• Elided lifetime:

  fn fun_name( x: &i32, y: &i32){ 
} 
  

• Expanded form:

  fn fun_name<'a,'b>( x :& 'a i32, y : & 'b i32){
}
  

Rule 2 link

If there is only one input parameter, its lifetime is assigned to all the elided output lifetimes.

• Elided lifetime:

  fn fun_name(x: i32) -> &i32{
}
  

• Expanded form:

  fn fun<'a>(x: i32) -> & 'a i32 {
}
  

Rule 3 link

If there are multiple input lifetimes, one of them is &self or &mut self, the lifetime of self is assigned to all elided output lifetimes.

• Elided lifetime:

  fn fun_name(&self, x : &str) -> & str {
}
  

• Expanded form:

  fn fun_name<'a,'b>(& 'a self, x : & 'b str) -> & 'a str {
}
  

Note: If the compiler can’t infer the lifetime, it throws an error.