maybe-owned

provides a MaybeOwned<'a,T> type different to std's Cow it implements From<T> and From<&'a T> and does not require ToOwned

This crate provides a MaybeOwned<'a,T> enum. Different to std::borrow::Cow it implements From<T> and From<&'a T> and does not require a ToOwned implementation. While this can be nice for API's mainly consuming T's not implementing ToOwned or implementing ToOwned through Clone it also means it's borrowed version of String is &String and not &str making it less performant for cases like String or Vec.

Documentation can be viewed on docs.rs.

Example

Take a look at the examples dir and the documentation for more complete examples.

The main benefit of MaybeOwned over Cow is for API design, allowing API consumer to pass in both T and &'a T:

//... in a trait implementation
    fn register<D>(&mut self, key: SomeId, data: D)
        where D: Into<MaybeOwned<'a, Data>>
    {
        self.map.entry(key).or_insert_with(||data.into());
    }
//...

//... in usage
    // use owned data
    registry.register(id1, data_owned);
    // use a reference to the data
    registry.register(id2, &data_ref);
    // it ok to use the same reference again
    registry.register(id3, &data_ref);
//...

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

Change Log

• v0.3.4:

  • Added make_owned() as a to_mut() replacement, but also available for MaybeOwnedMut and more clear in it's functionality.

  • Added a as_mut() method to MaybeOwned which return a Option<&mut T>

  • Added missing BorrowMut implementation for MaybeOwnedMut

• v0.3.3:

  • added MaybeOwnedMut

• v0.3.2:

  • added transitive std::ops implementations

• v0.3.1:

  • added serde support