this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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Rust

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If a trait has a supertrait you can coerce a reference to said trait object to a reference to a trait object of the supertrait

As someone that just started learning Rust: wha?

[–] livingcoder 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Basically, you can generalize your trait types into their parent (super) traits for situations when functionality is specific to those supertrait objects.

As an example, if you have a trait CanBark and it is a super trait for the trait IsDog, you can coerce your references of &dyn IsDog into a &dyn CanBark. You can then work with other trait types that share a super trait.

trait CanBark {
    fn bark(&self);
}
trait IsSeal: CanBark { }
trait IsDog: CanBark { }

fn bark_as_group(barkers: &Vec<&dyn CanBark>) {
    for barker in barkers {
        barker.bark();
    }
}

let spot: &dyn IsDog = get_spot();
let seal: &dyn IsSeal = get_seal();
let barkers: Vec<&dyn CanBark> = Vec::new();
barkers.push(spot);  // coerced
barkers.push(seal);  // coerced
bark_as_group(&barkers);

At least, I hope this is possible now. If it's purely "you can return a coerced type from a function", that is less useful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you

So basically, it's like inheritance but for traits?

[–] livingcoder 2 points 1 week ago

Exactly. The functions of the super trait are also required when implementing the child trait's functions, as you would expect from inheritance.