Bringing Paths into Scope with the use Keyword
It might seem like the paths we’ve written to call functions so far are
inconveniently long and repetitive. For example, in Listing 7-7, whether we
chose the absolute or relative path to the add_to_waitlist function, every
time we wanted to call add_to_waitlist we had to specify front_of_house and
hosting too. Fortunately, there’s a way to simplify this process. We can
create a shortcut to a path with the use keyword once, and then use the
shorter name everywhere else in the scope.
In Listing 7-11, we bring the crate::front_of_house::hosting module into the
scope of the eat_at_restaurant function so we only have to specify
hosting::add_to_waitlist to call the add_to_waitlist function in
eat_at_restaurant.
Filename: src/lib.rs
mod front_of_house {
pub mod hosting {
pub fn add_to_waitlist() {}
}
}
use crate::front_of_house::hosting;
pub fn eat_at_restaurant() {
hosting::add_to_waitlist();
}
Listing 7-11: Bringing a module into scope with
use
Adding use and a path in a scope is similar to creating a symbolic link in
the filesystem. By adding use crate::front_of_house::hosting in the crate
root, hosting is now a valid name in that scope, just as though the hosting
module had been defined in the crate root. Paths brought into scope with use
also check privacy, like any other paths.
Note that use only creates the shortcut for the particular scope in which the
use occurs. Listing 7-12 moves the eat_at_restaurant function into a new
child module named customer, which is then a different scope than the use
statement and the function body won’t compile:
Filename: src/lib.rs
mod front_of_house {
pub mod hosting {
pub fn add_to_waitlist() {}
}
}
use crate::front_of_house::hosting;
mod customer {
pub fn eat_at_restaurant() {
hosting::add_to_waitlist();
}
}
Listing 7-12: A use statement only applies in the scope
it’s in
The compiler error shows that the shortcut no longer applies within the
customer module:
$ cargo build
Compiling restaurant v0.1.0 (file:///projects/restaurant)
error[E0433]: failed to resolve: use of undeclared crate or module `hosting`
--> src/lib.rs:11:9
|
11 | hosting::add_to_waitlist();
| ^^^^^^^ use of undeclared crate or module `hosting`
warning: unused import: `crate::front_of_house::hosting`
--> src/lib.rs:7:5
|
7 | use crate::front_of_house::hosting;
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|
= note: `#[warn(unused_imports)]` on by default
For more information about this error, try `rustc --explain E0433`.
warning: `restaurant` (lib) generated 1 warning
error: could not compile `restaurant` due to previous error; 1 warning emitted
Notice there’s also a warning that the use is no longer used in its scope! To
fix this problem, move the use within the customer module too, or reference
the shortcut in the parent module with super::hosting within the child
customer module.
Creating Idiomatic use Paths
In Listing 7-11, you might have wondered why we specified use crate::front_of_house::hosting and then called hosting::add_to_waitlist in
eat_at_restaurant rather than specifying the use path all the way out to
the add_to_waitlist function to achieve the same result, as in Listing 7-13.
Filename: src/lib.rs
mod front_of_house {
pub mod hosting {
pub fn add_to_waitlist() {}
}
}
use crate::front_of_house::hosting::add_to_waitlist;
pub fn eat_at_restaurant() {
add_to_waitlist();
}
Listing 7-13: Bringing the add_to_waitlist function
into scope with use, which is unidiomatic
Although both Listing 7-11 and 7-13 accomplish the same task, Listing 7-11 is
the idiomatic way to bring a function into scope with use. Bringing the
function’s parent module into scope with use means we have to specify the
parent module when calling the function. Specifying the parent module when
calling the function makes it clear that the function isn’t locally defined
while still minimizing repetition of the full path. The code in Listing 7-13 is
unclear as to where add_to_waitlist is defined.
On the other hand, when bringing in structs, enums, and other items with use,
it’s idiomatic to specify the full path. Listing 7-14 shows the idiomatic way
to bring the standard library’s HashMap struct into the scope of a binary
crate.
Filename: src/main.rs
use std::collections::HashMap; fn main() { let mut map = HashMap::new(); map.insert(1, 2); }
Listing 7-14: Bringing HashMap into scope in an
idiomatic way
There’s no strong reason behind this idiom: it’s just the convention that has emerged, and folks have gotten used to reading and writing Rust code this way.
The exception to this idiom is if we’re bringing two items with the same name
into scope with use statements, because Rust doesn’t allow that. Listing 7-15
shows how to bring two Result types into scope that have the same name but
different parent modules and how to refer to them.
Filename: src/lib.rs
use std::fmt;
use std::io;
fn function1() -> fmt::Result {
// --snip--
Ok(())
}
fn function2() -> io::Result<()> {
// --snip--
Ok(())
}
Listing 7-15: Bringing two types with the same name into the same scope requires using their parent modules.
As you can see, using the parent modules distinguishes the two Result types.
If instead we specified use std::fmt::Result and use std::io::Result, we’d
have two Result types in the same scope and Rust wouldn’t know which one we
meant when we used Result.
Providing New Names with the as Keyword
There’s another solution to the problem of bringing two types of the same name
into the same scope with use: after the path, we can specify as and a new
local name, or alias, for the type. Listing 7-16 shows another way to write the
code in Listing 7-15 by renaming one of the two Result types using as.
Filename: src/lib.rs
use std::fmt::Result;
use std::io::Result as IoResult;
fn function1() -> Result {
// --snip--
Ok(())
}
fn function2() -> IoResult<()> {
// --snip--
Ok(())
}
Listing 7-16: Renaming a type when it’s brought into
scope with the as keyword
In the second use statement, we chose the new name IoResult for the
std::io::Result type, which won’t conflict with the Result from std::fmt
that we’ve also brought into scope. Listing 7-15 and Listing 7-16 are
considered idiomatic, so the choice is up to you!
Re-exporting Names with pub use
When we bring a name into scope with the use keyword, the name available in
the new scope is private. To enable the code that calls our code to refer to
that name as if it had been defined in that code’s scope, we can combine pub
and use. This technique is called re-exporting because we’re bringing
an item into scope but also making that item available for others to bring into
their scope.
Listing 7-17 shows the code in Listing 7-11 with use in the root module
changed to pub use.
Filename: src/lib.rs
mod front_of_house {
pub mod hosting {
pub fn add_to_waitlist() {}
}
}
pub use crate::front_of_house::hosting;
pub fn eat_at_restaurant() {
hosting::add_to_waitlist();
}
Listing 7-17: Making a name available for any code to use
from a new scope with pub use
Before this change, external code would have to call the add_to_waitlist
function by using the path
restaurant::front_of_house::hosting::add_to_waitlist(). Now that this pub use has re-exported the hosting module from the root module, external code
can now use the path restaurant::hosting::add_to_waitlist() instead.
Re-exporting is useful when the internal structure of your code is different
from how programmers calling your code would think about the domain. For
example, in this restaurant metaphor, the people running the restaurant think
about “front of house” and “back of house.” But customers visiting a restaurant
probably won’t think about the parts of the restaurant in those terms. With
pub use, we can write our code with one structure but expose a different
structure. Doing so makes our library well organized for programmers working on
the library and programmers calling the library. We’ll look at another example
of pub use and how it affects your crate’s documentation in the “Exporting a
Convenient Public API with pub use” section of
Chapter 14.
Using External Packages
In Chapter 2, we programmed a guessing game project that used an external
package called rand to get random numbers. To use rand in our project, we
added this line to Cargo.toml:
Filename: Cargo.toml
rand = "0.8.3"
Adding rand as a dependency in Cargo.toml tells Cargo to download the
rand package and any dependencies from crates.io and
make rand available to our project.
Then, to bring rand definitions into the scope of our package, we added a
use line starting with the name of the crate, rand, and listed the items
we wanted to bring into scope. Recall that in the “Generating a Random
Number” section in Chapter 2, we brought the Rng trait
into scope and called the rand::thread_rng function:
use std::io;
use rand::Rng;
fn main() {
println!("Guess the number!");
let secret_number = rand::thread_rng().gen_range(1..=100);
println!("The secret number is: {secret_number}");
println!("Please input your guess.");
let mut guess = String::new();
io::stdin()
.read_line(&mut guess)
.expect("Failed to read line");
println!("You guessed: {guess}");
}
Members of the Rust community have made many packages available at
crates.io, and pulling any of them into your package
involves these same steps: listing them in your package’s Cargo.toml file and
using use to bring items from their crates into scope.
Note that the standard library (std) is also a crate that’s external to our
package. Because the standard library is shipped with the Rust language, we
don’t need to change Cargo.toml to include std. But we do need to refer to
it with use to bring items from there into our package’s scope. For example,
with HashMap we would use this line:
#![allow(unused)] fn main() { use std::collections::HashMap; }
This is an absolute path starting with std, the name of the standard library
crate.
Using Nested Paths to Clean Up Large use Lists
If we’re using multiple items defined in the same crate or same module,
listing each item on its own line can take up a lot of vertical space in our
files. For example, these two use statements we had in the Guessing Game in
Listing 2-4 bring items from std into scope:
Filename: src/main.rs
use rand::Rng;
// --snip--
use std::cmp::Ordering;
use std::io;
// --snip--
fn main() {
println!("Guess the number!");
let secret_number = rand::thread_rng().gen_range(1..=100);
println!("The secret number is: {secret_number}");
println!("Please input your guess.");
let mut guess = String::new();
io::stdin()
.read_line(&mut guess)
.expect("Failed to read line");
println!("You guessed: {guess}");
match guess.cmp(&secret_number) {
Ordering::Less => println!("Too small!"),
Ordering::Greater => println!("Too big!"),
Ordering::Equal => println!("You win!"),
}
}
Instead, we can use nested paths to bring the same items into scope in one line. We do this by specifying the common part of the path, followed by two colons, and then curly brackets around a list of the parts of the paths that differ, as shown in Listing 7-18.
Filename: src/main.rs
use rand::Rng;
// --snip--
use std::{cmp::Ordering, io};
// --snip--
fn main() {
println!("Guess the number!");
let secret_number = rand::thread_rng().gen_range(1..=100);
println!("The secret number is: {secret_number}");
println!("Please input your guess.");
let mut guess = String::new();
io::stdin()
.read_line(&mut guess)
.expect("Failed to read line");
let guess: u32 = guess.trim().parse().expect("Please type a number!");
println!("You guessed: {guess}");
match guess.cmp(&secret_number) {
Ordering::Less => println!("Too small!"),
Ordering::Greater => println!("Too big!"),
Ordering::Equal => println!("You win!"),
}
}
Listing 7-18: Specifying a nested path to bring multiple items with the same prefix into scope
In bigger programs, bringing many items into scope from the same crate or
module using nested paths can reduce the number of separate use statements
needed by a lot!
We can use a nested path at any level in a path, which is useful when combining
two use statements that share a subpath. For example, Listing 7-19 shows two
use statements: one that brings std::io into scope and one that brings
std::io::Write into scope.
Filename: src/lib.rs
use std::io;
use std::io::Write;
Listing 7-19: Two use statements where one is a subpath
of the other
The common part of these two paths is std::io, and that’s the complete first
path. To merge these two paths into one use statement, we can use self in
the nested path, as shown in Listing 7-20.
Filename: src/lib.rs
use std::io::{self, Write};
Listing 7-20: Combining the paths in Listing 7-19 into
one use statement
This line brings std::io and std::io::Write into scope.
The Glob Operator
If we want to bring all public items defined in a path into scope, we can
specify that path followed by *, the glob operator:
#![allow(unused)] fn main() { use std::collections::*; }
This use statement brings all public items defined in std::collections into
the current scope. Be careful when using the glob operator! Glob can make it
harder to tell what names are in scope and where a name used in your program
was defined.
The glob operator is often used when testing to bring everything under test
into the tests module; we’ll talk about that in the “How to Write
Tests” section in Chapter 11. The glob operator
is also sometimes used as part of the prelude pattern: see the standard
library documentation
for more information on that pattern.