Generalize `box` keyword to Rc and Arc and possibly other pointers

internals ideas (deprecated)
1

Hi all, I’m very new to Rust, so I’ll not be disappointed if someone will explain me that this idea is a nonsense.

When I see this code:

use std::rc::Rc;
use std::sync::Arc;

fn main() {
    let a: Box<i32> = box 1;
    let b: Rc<i32> = Rc::new(2);
    let c: Arc<i32> = Arc::new(3);
    println!("a = {}, b = {}, c = {}", *a, *b, *c);
}

I think: if box is something like a syntactic sugar for something like Box::new, why not generalize the boxing concept to other pointers too? Something similar to the * operator in the opposite sense.

That could be valuable for example to switch between Rc and Arc without involving macros.

2

This was always the intention, it just hasn’t been done yet.

2 Likes
3

Ok, thanks! I see the future of box has been discussed in this week meeting too.

4

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