Updated: The cs140e hosted on Stanford’s servers is down, but Sergio has helpfully put up an archived copy here. I’ve changed the links in this post to reflect that.

I always enjoy reading blogs about patterns or tricks people have picked up writing Rust. I’ve seen this a few times but not read about it anywhere.

I’ve been doing class assignments from Operating Systems cs140e. I highly recommend this class if you know a bit of Rust and would like to try writing some lower level code. The class involves building bits of an OS for the raspberry pi. It requires some hardware components, and it took me a while to source the parts they used in the class, particularly the CP2102 USB dongle. Links at the end of the article.

The problem

Assignment 1 has multiple phases, one of which is to implement parts of the Xmodem protocol. Xmodem is used for transferring data through serial interfaces. Although we haven’t arrived there yet, I imagine it’ll be used for transferring data to pi through the CP2102 dongle.

This is the Xmodem struct as given at the start of the assignment:

pub struct Xmodem < R > { packet : u8 , inner : R , started : bool , progress : ProgressFn } type ProgressFn = fn ( Progress ); pub fn noop ( _ : Progress ) {}

Notice ProgressFn is a function pointer. After I completed the assignment, I came back to this. I wanted to show a running progress bar, but with a function pointer I had no ability to capture any outside variables in my ProgressFn . Or at least no way that I knew of. If I wanted to capture variables from another scope, I needed to refactor this into a closure.

There’s a lot of solutions on offer here. I could have just stuffed a Box<dyn Fn(ProgressFn)> in the struct and been done with it, and while the Xmodem didn’t have no_std, none of the other assignments did allocation and I didn’t want to start here. Feeling parsimonious, I decided against boxing altogether.

First attempt

pub struct Xmodem < R , F > where F : Fn ( Progress ), { packet : u8 , inner : R , started : bool , progress : F }

To me, this had a syllogism to it. I want to hold a closure, so I should bound my declaration by that. When you introduce bounds here, they propagate, almost leaking out, to the every impl block afterwards. See if you can spot the problem:

impl < T : io :: Read + io :: Write , F : Fn ( Progress ) > Xmodem < T , F > { pub fn new ( inner : T ) -> Self { Xmodem { packet : 1 , started : false , inner , progress : progress :: noop , } } pub fn new_with_progress ( inner : T , f : F ) -> Self { Xmodem { packet : 1 , started : false , inner , progress : f , } } // and others }

Xmodem::new is returning progress::noop , our function pointer. Only it’s type variable says that it must be a Xmodem<T, F> where F is some Fn(Progress) . Substituting a closure |_: Progress| {} in it’s place doesn’t help either, it’s still choosing some specific trait when there’s a more general one in the type signature. Our type F claims to be valid for all Fn , but we’re giving it a specific closure/fn pointer. You may recognize this as being an existential type.

Here’s the error:

error [ E0308 ] : mismatched types --> src/lib.rs:143:23 | 143 | progress: progress::noop, | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ expected type parameter, found fn item | = note: expected type ` F ` found type ` fn ( progress::Progress ) { progress::noop } `

Separate the new* impls

We can get the above to compile by breaking up the new method into it’s own impl that’s specific about the type it returns:

impl < T : io :: Read + io :: Write > Xmodem < T , fn ( Progress ) > { pub fn new ( inner : T ) -> Xmodem < T , fn ( Progress ) > { Xmodem { packet : 1 , started : false , inner , progress : progress :: noop , } } }

However, when you actually go to use this code, it produces a compiler error with a misleading hint:

error [ E0284 ] : type annotations required: cannot resolve ` <_ as std::ops::FnOnce< ( progress::Progress, ) >>::Output == () ` --> src/tests.rs:51:48 | 51 | let tx_thread = std::thread::spawn ( move || Xmodem::transmit ( & input [ .. ] , rx )) ; | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ | note: required by ` <Xmodem< () , F>>::transmit ` --> src/lib.rs:41:5 | 41 | / pub fn transmit<R, W> ( data: R, to: W ) -> io::Result<usize> 42 | | where 43 | | W: io::Read + io::Write, 44 | | R: io::Read, 45 | | { 46 | | Xmodem::transmit_with_progress ( data, to, progress::noop ) 47 | | } | | _____^

You can solve this annotation with Xmodem::<(), fn(Progress) -> ()>::transmit . But every call-site will need to be annotated. If the return type is changed to impl Fn , as in the next section, it asks for an annotation I’m not sure how to solve.

Using unit type params

In the original implementation, Xmodem does something interesting with it’s inner value. It’s set to an unbounded type parameter R . We can take this approach with F . If anyone has written Haskell, this may look familiar: data types like a binary tree aren’t usually bounded by Ord in the declaration, however the functions that interact with it provide an interface to the data that is bounded. I think this is a good strategy if it’s available. Keep the actual type declaration as generic as possible, then control the bounds by choosing which methods you make public. Only in the impl are the bounds introduced, and then only on the methods where necessary.

The new Xmodem type:

pub struct Xmodem < R , F > { packet : u8 , started : bool , inner : R , progress : F , }

and for the implementation:

impl Xmodem < (), () > { pub fn transmit < R , W > ( data : R , to : W ) -> io :: Result < usize > where W : io :: Read + io :: Write , R : io :: Read , { Xmodem :: transmit_with_progress ( data , to , progress :: noop ) } pub fn transmit_with_progress < R , W , F > ( mut data : R , to : W , f : F ) -> io :: Result < usize > where W : io :: Read + io :: Write , R : io :: Read , F : Fn ( Progress ) { let mut transmitter = Xmodem :: new_with_progress ( to , f ); //... } // and others } impl < T : io :: Read + io :: Write > Xmodem < T , fn ( Progress ) > { pub fn new ( inner : T ) -> Xmodem < T , fn ( Progress ) > { Xmodem { packet : 1 , started : false , inner , progress : progress :: noop , } } }

If I had put impl<F> Xmodem<(), F> , I would either have to bound the entire impl block by where F: Fn(Progress) , which gets me back to:

error [ E0284 ] : type annotations required: cannot resolve ` <_ as std::ops::FnOnce< ( progress::Progress, ) >>::Output == () ` --> src/tests.rs:51:48 | 51 | let tx_thread = std::thread::spawn ( move || Xmodem::transmit ( & input [ .. ] , rx )) ; // <FnOnce< ( Progress ) >>::Output = ()

Or leave it unbounded, which would cause a compilation error when calling new_with_progress :

106 | let mut receiver = Xmodem::new_with_progress ( from, f ) ; | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ expected an ` Fn< ( progress::Progress, ) > ` closure, found ` F `

Unit’s type and value are both () . In this case, we’re able to satisfy the type parameters in the impl declaration and still control the bounds on the methods. The catch here is of course, the methods transmit transmit_with_progress and a few others not mentioned here are now only valid when Xmodem::<(), ()> .

EDIT: I somehow forgot the most important code section of the post!

Using unit as a type param we can write,

impl < T : io :: Read + io :: Write > Xmodem < T , () > { pub fn new ( inner : T ) -> Xmodem < T , fn ( Progress ) > { Xmodem { packet : 1 , started : false , inner , progress : progress :: noop , } } }

There’s nothing prodigious about () . Any type will do. We could’ve written:

impl < T : io :: Read + io :: Write > Xmodem < T , u8 > { pub fn new ( inner : T ) -> Xmodem < T , fn ( Progress ) > { Xmodem { packet : 1 , started : false , inner , progress : progress :: noop , } } }

And everything would work just fine. () creates less room for confusion and ambiguity though.

On IRC, an improvement was suggested that makes things a bit more explicit. Using the () type param again on the new impl:

impl < T > Xmodem < T , () > where T : io :: Read + io :: Write , { pub fn new ( inner : T ) -> Xmodem < T , impl Fn ( Progress ) > { Xmodem { packet : 1 , started : false , inner , progress : progress :: noop , } } }

On Nightly

I was also directed to this possible solution, which is available on nightly behind a feature flag. This makes it possible to declare a type as existential and circumvent passing () as a type parameter. This is and the previous solution are from talchas:

#![feature(existential_type)] existential type ProgressFn : Fn (); struct Foo < F > ( F ); impl Foo < ProgressFn > { fn new () -> Self { Foo ( || ()) } }

IMO, this seems closer to ideal. We have the language to tell the type system what’s going on.

Thank you

Thanks for reading! The Rust community has been great to me over the last few years. I come from a web background, and never thought I would do anything interesting in a language as low level as Rust. Shout out to all the fine people I’ve bothered with questions.

CP2102 dongle

Be careful when you source this part to get the 5-pin version and not the 6-pin one that seems fairly popular online.

USA: cp2102

Canada: cp2102