I have a programming assignment of creating a bubble sort using Rust. I don't really have much experience in Rust so this is a little bit hard for me:
fn main() {
println!("Sort numbers ascending");
let num:[i32; 10] = [4, 65, 2, -31, 0, 99, 2, 83, 782, 1];
println!("Before: {:?}", num);
bubble_sort( num);
println!("After: {:?}\n", num);
}
fn swap( a: &mut i32, b: &mut i32){
let tmp: i32 = *b;
*b=*a;
*a=tmp;
}
fn bubble_sort(mut arr: [i32; 10]) {
for i in 0..arr.len() {
for j in 0..arr.len() - 1 - i {
if arr[j] > arr[j + 1] {
swap( &mut arr[j], &mut arr[j + 1]);
}
}
}
}
Error:
Compiling playground v0.0.1 (/playground)
error[E0499]: cannot borrow `arr[_]` as mutable more than once at a time
--> src/main.rs:19:24
|
19 | swap( &mut arr[j], &mut arr[j + 1]);
| ---- ----------- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ second mutable borrow occurs here
| | |
| | first mutable borrow occurs here
| first borrow later used by call
|
= help: consider using `.split_at_mut(position)` or similar method to obtain two mutable non-overlapping sub-slices
For more information about this error, try `rustc --explain E0499`.
error: could not compile `playground` due to previous error
The Rust borrow checker is quite sophisticated, but it has limitations. Here, even though it's obvious to a human that there is no mutable aliasing going on, that fact is totally hidden from the borrow checker. It sees &mut arr[j]
and &mut arr[j + 1]
and concludes: "you're trying to borrow mutably from arr
twice".
The error message does indicate the solution:
split_at_mut()
is provided for exactly this situation. Under the hood, it uses unsafe
to bend the above rule in a way that is still sound and will not cause UB. It takes an index to split at, and returns 2 non-overlapping mutable slices. This is the example from the docs:
let mut v = [1, 0, 3, 0, 5, 6];
let (left, right) = v.split_at_mut(2);
assert_eq!(left, [1, 0]);
assert_eq!(right, [3, 0, 5, 6]);
So in your case, instead of using &mut arr[j]
to get a mutable reference to the number, you can do:
let (start, end) = arr.split_at_mut(1);
swap(&mut start[0], &mut end[0]);
P.S. there's also .swap(i, j)
for slices :-D