take_ref

take_ref provides TakeRef, TakeSlice, and TakeString traits which enable treating references/slices and values interchangeably. They can be treated as references/slices. And you can take ownership of the value within with a clone performed only as needed.

An Example

The example take_slice can take in both &[i64] and Vec<i64> instances and refer to them multiple times before finally deciding that it needs to take ownership of a Vec<i64>. At that point if it is a &[i64] a Vec<i64> is constructed from the &[i64]. On the other hand, if it is a Vec<i64> ownership is transferred directly without overhead.

use take_ref::TakeSlice;

fn take_slice(value: impl TakeSlice<i64>) {
    value.as_slice();
    value.as_slice();
    value.take();
}