AnyStr?

[NicholasSterling]

Interesting crate -- thanks for the contribution.

This is a minor point, but when I saw AnyString I thought "oh no, if I had an &str, I wouldn't necessarily want it to be converted to a String." But the target type for AnyString is actually &str. So this leaves me with two thoughts:

1. Would it be clearer to call that AnyStr?
2. Do you want an AnyString (with a target type of String) too?

[CarlKCarlK]

Nicholas,

I very much appreciate your suggestion. (And, I'll likely switch to AnyStr in the next version.)

Are you happy with AnyArray? Would it be better to call it AnySlice?

On the one hand, the names Str and Slice are what Rust calls things. On the other hand, a newcomer to Rust likely finds Str strange and Slice confusing.

Aside: In Python and even in Rust's ndarray crate, a "slice" is a kind of fancy indexing.

Yours,
Carl

[NicholasSterling]

Oh, good point. I actually do think that AnySlice would be better, too. You're right that Str and Slice may not be familiar terms to those brand new to Rust, but I think in practice by the time people come across your crate and understand why it could be helpful, they'll already be well over the hump with &str and []. My concern is that somebody who knows some Rust and looks at somebody else's code seeing AnyString and AnyArray is going to think "Ah, I'll bet that is a convenience that gets them a String or array from readily convertible types" and needlessly worry about performance or whatever.

[Supermath101]

How about creating a type alias for AnyStr, which could internally use AnySlice/AnyArray? Like this:

type AnyStr = AnyArray<str>;