easy_node

Smart pointer for graph nodes.

The author of this crate is not good at English.
Forgive me if the document is hard to read.

What is this?

This crate provides some smart pointers optimized for managing graph data structures.

• Nr - like Rc
• Nw - like Weak.

These smart pointers behavior is similar to Rc and Weak.
However, These smart pointer comparison is location based.

Other options

by_address is a great crate with similar purpose.

It supports location based comparison too. But unlike this crate, it can target any type that implements Deref trait. And therefore, Weak that does not implement Deref need other support.

On the other hand, this crate specializes on Rc and Weak. Instead, we discard other smart pointers like Box. This is because this crate assumes only nodes in graph or network.

Unsize handling

As of 2024, to support unsize conversions with smart pointers, unstable feature CoerceUnsized is required. So, Rc<Type> to Rc<dyn Trait> conversion is supported, but Nr<Type> to Nr<dyn Trait> is not.

As workaround, we provide inter-conversions between Nr and Rc, and between Nw and Weak. Nr and Nw functions as_base, from_base, and base are them.

Versions

See the CHANGELOG.