What is this question mark operator about?
RustRust Problem Overview
I'm reading the documentation for File
:
//..
let mut file = File::create("foo.txt")?;
//..
What is the ?
in this line? I do not recall seeing it in the Rust Book before.
Rust Solutions
Solution 1 - Rust
As you may have noticed, Rust does not have exceptions. It has panics, but their use for error-handling is discouraged (they are meant for unrecoverable errors).
In Rust, error handling uses Result
. A typical example would be:
fn halves_if_even(i: i32) -> Result<i32, Error> {
if i % 2 == 0 {
Ok(i / 2)
} else {
Err(/* something */)
}
}
fn do_the_thing(i: i32) -> Result<i32, Error> {
let i = match halves_if_even(i) {
Ok(i) => i,
Err(e) => return Err(e),
};
// use `i`
}
This is great because:
- when writing the code you cannot accidentally forget to deal with the error,
- when reading the code you can immediately see that there is a potential for error right here.
It's less than ideal, however, in that it is very verbose. This is where the question mark operator ?
comes in.
The above can be rewritten as:
fn do_the_thing(i: i32) -> Result<i32, Error> {
let i = halves_if_even(i)?;
// use `i`
}
which is much more concise.
What ?
does here is equivalent to the match
statement above with an addition. In short:
- It unpacks the
Result
if OK - It returns the error if not, calling
Into::into
on the error value to potentially convert it to another type.
It's a bit magic, but error handling needs some magic to cut down the boilerplate, and unlike exceptions it is immediately visible which function calls may or may not error out: those that are adorned with ?
.
One example of the magic is that this also works for Option
:
// Assume
// fn halves_if_even(i: i32) -> Option<i32>
fn do_the_thing(i: i32) -> Option<i32> {
let i = halves_if_even(i)?;
// use `i`
}
The ?
operator, stabilized in Rust version 1.13.0 is powered by the (unstable) Try
trait.
See also:
Solution 2 - Rust
It is a postfix operator that unwraps Result<T, E>
and Option<T>
values.
If applied to Result<T, E>
, it unwraps the result and gives you the inner value, propagating the error to the calling function.
let number = "42".parse::<i32>()?;
println!("{:?}", number); // 42
When applied to an Option<T>
, it propagates None
to the caller, leaving you the content of the Some branch to deal with.
let val = Some(42)?;
println!("{:?}", val); // 42
The ?
operator can only be used in a function that returns Result
or Option
like so:
use std::num::ParseIntError;
fn main() -> Result<(), ParseIntError> {
let number = "42".parse::<i32>()?;
println!("{:?}", number);
Ok(())
}
It is a convenience offered by Rust, that eliminates boilerplate code and makes function's implementation simpler.