In essence, Rust is a programming language built to overcome the shortcomings of other prominent players in the industry. Consistency and speed, paired with a low memory footprint, makes Rust an immensely powerful programming tool that stands out from the others.
Working with Rust allows the developers to create consistent code by discovering different aspects of the language intuitively. The iterators and Rust maps function in the programming language allows the coders to write idiomatic Rust codes and effectively deal with collections and lists.
From working with iterators to manipulating collections and Vectors, Rust .map ( ) function plays a major role as a functional programming concept in Rust.
Rust Programming Language – An Overview
According to Stack Overflow’s annual survey, Rust programming language has been the most loved language among the developer community for the last four years. Its ability to solve problems that are present in other languages is the main reason for its popularity.
Moreover, if you manage to unlock its additional features, you will also be rewarded with a faster, cleaner, and safer code. Some of the critical principles of Rust include:
- Methods and functions to operate on data
- Enforcing safe borrowing of data
- Pattern matching to destructure and select data
These principles work collectively to create a language that can create fast-operating codes that other factors cannot easily deter. Besides these, Rust stands out for security. Unlike C and C++, Rust is perceived as a “safe by default” language.
Functional Programming in Rust
Functional programming is a paradigm that allows you to write concise, expressive, and elegant codes. It helps talented full stack developers from High5 to manage code in such a way that they don’t repeat the same code over and over again.
Even though Rust is not a functional language, it has several features similar to other languages, like higher-order functions, currying, closures, recursion, referential transparency, and lazy evaluations.
You can always use functional programming concepts to implement imperative or Object-oriented concepts in Rust. Regardless of the language or paradigm, functions like Rust maps can be employed whenever possible.
When deploying functional programming methods, you can use data types like Maps majorly as it also has functional implementations.
Functional programming in Rust offers many useful techniques for creating a more maintainable, understandable, and testable code. It can co-exist with object-oriented and imperative programming styles perfectly.
Map Function in Rust Programming
The Iterator in Rust programming language performs much of the functional load. Any variables in Rust, also known as Vector, can be converted into an Iterator using,
- iter ( )
- into_iter( )
The function iter ( ) passes the values of each element by reference to eliminate the need for copying. And, the function into_iter ( ) gives the values by copying each element.
The Rust Map ( ) Method
Rust maps are generally used for dealing with collections and lists in the Rust programming language. It offers a way to apply a closure or a function on each element from a list. This method is used frequently to interact with variables and Iterators in Rust.
For instance, let’s take up a vector of numbers and multiply each number by 20. Write down the code and run it on the program. Once done, the result will be [120, 200, 240, 400]
You may notice that .map ( ) directly does not work on the Vector of numbers. When it comes to Rust, it is far easier and relevant to use iterators instead of directly interacting with a variable or Vector.
The Syntax
The map ( ) can be applied only to iterable. Hence, to use the function map ( ) to a vector, you must convert it into an iterable.
Iterable.map (|current_item| function (current _item))
In this,
Iterable – is the iterable you want to apply map ( ) to
current_item – is each item in the iterable
function (current _item) – is using a function to items in the iterable
Codes and Examples
Given here are some examples which show how Rust map ( ) is used.
Remember that,
- .collect ( ) method uses the iterator and gathers the following values into a collection data type.
- .into_iter ( ) and .iter ( ) are used to change a variable/vector into an iterable.
Example 1
let mut count = 0;
for pair in vec! [ ‘a’ , ‘b’ , ‘c ‘ ] .into_iter ( )
.map ( |single_letter| { count +=1; (single_letter, count) })
Example 2
let vector = [ 1 , 2 , 3 ];
let result = vector.iter ( ).map (|x| x * 2). collect : : < Vec<i32>>( );
//another way to write this statement
/*let result: Vec<i32> = vector .iter ( ) .map (|x| x * 2).collect ( ); * /
To summarize, you would by now know the importance of iterators in the Rust programming language. Though not a universal solution, Rust Maps is a technique that will be a better match for many tasks compared to other functional programming concepts.
