idiomatic-rust/README.md

This repository collects resources for writing clean, idiomatic Rust code. Please bring your own. 😊

Idiomatic coding means following the conventions of a given language. It is the most concise, convenient, and common way of accomplishing a task in that language, rather than forcing it to work in a way the author is familiar with from a different language. - Adapted from Tim Mansfield

Articles

2017

• Lessons learned redesigning and refactoring a Rust Library by @mgattozzi - RefCell, the builder pattern and more.

2016

• Russian Dolls and clean Rust code by @mgattozzi - How to use the full power of Option and Result (especially and_then() and unwrap_or()).
• Elegant Library APIs in Rust by @killercup - Many helpful tips and tricks for writing libraries in Rust.
• Teaching libraries through good documentation by @killercup - How to use the full power of Rust's documentation support (e.g. doc tests)
• Pretty State Machine Patterns in Rust by @hoverbear - How to represent a State Machine in an expressive and understandable way in Rust.
• Ripgrep Code Review by @mbrt - An analysis of the popular ripgrep tool's source code.
• Rustic Bits by @llogiq - Small things that make for rustic code.
• Convenient and idiomatic conversions in Rust by meqif - Explains From<T>, Into<T>, TryFrom<T>, TryInto<T>, AsRef<T> and AsMut<T> with pratical examples.

2015

• Rust traits for developer friendly libraries by @benashford - Thoughts about implementing good Rust libraries.
• Error Handling in Rust by @BurntSushi - Understanding and handling errors in Rust in an idiomatic way.
• Creating a Rust function that accepts String or &str by @hjr - How to make calling your code both ergonomic and fast (zero-allocation).
• Creating a Rust function that returns a &str or String by @hjr - How Into and Cow (Clone-on-write) work together to avoid allocations for string types.
• Effectively Using Iterators In Rust by @hjr - Explanation of the Iter and IntoIter traits and how loops actually work in Rust.
• Strategies for solving 'cannot move out of' borrowing errors in Rust by @hjr - Practical tips to help understand the borrow-checker and move semantics.

Talks

2017

Idiomatic Rust Libraries [Video] [Slides] by @killercup - Rustfest Kiev
What's so hard about writing a Slack Client in Rust? [Video] [Slides] by @mre - Rust Cologne Meetup

Projects

• clippy - A bunch of lints to catch common mistakes and improve your Rust code.
• Patterns - A catalogue of Rust design patterns.
• Rust by Example - A community driven collection of example code which follow Rust best practices.
• Rust Cookbook - Examples that demonstrate good practices to accomplish common programming tasks in Rust.
• rust-api-guidelines - An extensive list of recommendations for idiomatic Rust APIs.

History

Coming from Python I loved to have some guidelines on how "idiomatic Python" looks like. I was inspired by the likes of Peter Norvig, who wrote this amazing article about spellchecker for example: http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html. And, of course, the Zen of Python.

The goal is to have a peer-reviewed collection of articles/talks/repos which teach idiomatic Rust style. It's a community project. If this becomes a thing I plan to move it to some "semi-official" place like rust-nursery or so. But first I need YOUR help for that ;-)

License

To the extent possible under law, Matthias Endler has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. Logo adapted from FreePik.com.