iterator - Implementing a "cautious" take_while using Peekable

Question

I'd like to use Peekable as the basis for a new cautious_take_while operation that acts like take_while from IteratorExt but without consuming the first failed item. (There's a side question of whether this is a good idea, and whether there are better ways to accomplish this goal in Rust -- I'd be happy for hints in that direction, but mostly I'm trying to understand where my code is breaking).

The API I'm trying to enable is basically:

let mut chars = "abcdefg.".chars().peekable();

let abc : String = chars.by_ref().cautious_take_while(|&x| x != 'd');
let defg : String = chars.by_ref().cautious_take_while(|&x| x != '.');

// yielding (abc = "abc", defg = "defg")

I've taken a crack at creating a MCVE here, but I'm getting:

:10:5: 10:19 error: cannot move out of borrowed content :10 chars.by_ref().cautious_take_while(|&x| x != '.');

As far as I can tell, I'm following the same pattern as Rust's own TakeWhile in terms of my function signatures, but I'm seeing different different behavior from the borrow checker. Can someone point out what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

The funny thing with by_ref() is that it returns a mutable reference to itself:

pub trait IteratorExt: Iterator + Sized {
    fn by_ref(&mut self) -> &mut Self { self }
}

It works because the Iterator trait is implemented for the mutable pointer to Iterator type. Smart!

impl<'a, I> Iterator for &'a mut I where I: Iterator, I: ?Sized { ... }

The standard take_while function works because it uses the trait Iterator, that is automatically resolved to &mut Peekable<T>.

But your code does not work because Peekable is a struct, not a trait, so your CautiousTakeWhileable must specify the type, and you are trying to take ownership of it, but you cannot, because you have a mutable pointer.

Solution, do not take a Peekable<T> but &mut Peekable<T>. You will need to specify the lifetime too:

impl <'a, T: Iterator, P> Iterator for CautiousTakeWhile<&'a mut Peekable<T>, P>
where P: FnMut(&T::Item) -> bool {
     //...
}

impl <'a, T: Iterator> CautiousTakeWhileable for &'a mut Peekable<T> {
    fn cautious_take_while<P>(self, f: P) -> CautiousTakeWhile<&'a mut Peekable<T>, P>
     where P: FnMut(&T::Item) -> bool {
        CautiousTakeWhile{inner: self, condition: f,}
    }
}

A curious side effect of this solution is that now by_ref is not needed, because cautious_take_while() takes a mutable reference, so it does not steal ownership. The by_ref() call is needed for take_while() because it can take either Peekable<T> or &mut Peekable<T>, and it defaults to the first one. With the by_ref() call it will resolve to the second one.

And now that I finally understand it, I think it might be a good idea to change the definition of struct CautiousTakeWhile to include the peekable bit into the struct itself. The difficulty is that the lifetime has to be specified manually, if I'm right. Something like:

struct CautiousTakeWhile<'a, T: Iterator + 'a, P> 
    where T::Item : 'a {
    inner: &'a mut Peekable<T>,
    condition: P,
}
trait CautiousTakeWhileable<'a, T>: Iterator {
    fn cautious_take_while<P>(self, P) -> CautiousTakeWhile<'a, T, P> where
        P: FnMut(&Self::Item) -> bool;
}

and the rest is more or less straightforward.