Traits and Impl

A very powerful feature of Rust that is commonly seen when dealing with generics is that it is possible to tell the compiler that a particular type will provide certain functionality. This is provided by a special feature known as a trait.

However, to appreciate traits, we first have to look at the impl keyword (short for implement).

Impl

The impl keyword works in a very similar way to a function. The structure of an implementation needs to considered as being closer to a static class (in C#) or as a function within a function:

impl MyImpl
{
  fn reference_name (&self) ... 
}

This would be more for a non-generic type. For generics, the preceding code becomes the following:

impl <T> MyGenericImpl<T>
{
  fn reference_name(&self) ... 
}

Note that the <T> is required to tell the compiler that the impl is for a generic. reference_name is the name used to access the impl function. It can be anything you wish.

Note

An example of impl can be found in 09/impl_example...