orx-selfref-col

SelfRefCol is a core data structure to conveniently build safe and efficient self referential collections, such as linked lists and trees.

Features

Safe

It is tricky to implement safe self referential collections, SelfRefCol provides a safe and convenient api to enable them with the following approach:

• memory locations of elements of the collection will never change unless explicitly changed due to the pinned elements guarantees of the underlying PinnedVec,
• all references will be ensured to be among elements of the same collection.

orx-linked-list crate defines both singly and doubly linked lists based on SelfRefCol.

Efficient

The elements of the SelfRefCol are internally stored in a PinnedVec implementation, which is crucial for the correctness and safety of the references. Furthermore, in this way, elements of the collection are stored close to each other rather than being in arbitrary locations in memory in order to improve cache locality.

Variants

Note that this core structure is capable of representing a wide range of self referential collections, where the variant is conveniently defined by expressive trait type definitions.

• V: Variant: defines the structure of the collection with the following:
  • V::Item: is the type of the items or elements.
  • V::Prev: defines how references to previous elements will be stored.
    • RefsNone: there is no previous reference of elements.
    • RefsSingle: there is either one or no previous reference of elements, stored as Option<&Node>.
    • RefsArray: there are multiple possible previous references up to a constant number N, stored as [Option<&Node>; N].
    • RefsVec: there are multiple possible previous references, stored as Vec<&Node>.
  • V::Next: defines how references to next elements will be stored:
    • Similarly, represented as either one of RefsNone or RefsSingle or RefsArray or RefsVec.
  • V::Ends: defines how references to ends of the collection will be stored:
    • Similarly, represented as either one of RefsNone or RefsSingle or RefsArray or RefsVec.
• M: MemoryReclaimPolicy: defines how memory of closed nodes will be reclaimed:
  • MemoryReclaimNever will never claim closed nodes.
  • MemoryReclaimOnThreshold<D> will claim memory of closed nodes whenever the ratio of closed nodes exceeds one over 2^D.

Example

Consider the following four structs implementing Variant to define four different self referential collections. Note that the definitions are expressive and concise leading to efficient implementations.

use orx_selfref_col::*;
use core::marker::PhantomData;

pub struct Singly<T> {
    p: PhantomData<T>,
}
impl<T> Variant for Singly<T> {
    type Item = T;
    type Prev = RefsNone;
    type Next = RefsSingle<Self>;
    type Ends = RefsSingle<Self>; // front
}

pub struct Doubly<T> {
    p: PhantomData<T>,
}
impl<T> Variant for Doubly<T> {
    type Item = T;
    type Prev = RefsSingle<Self>;
    type Next = RefsSingle<Self>;
    type Ends = RefsArray<2, Self>; // front & back
}

pub struct BinaryTree<T> {
    p: PhantomData<T>,
}
impl<T> Variant for BinaryTree<T> {
    type Item = T;
    type Prev = RefsSingle<Self>;   // parent
    type Next = RefsArray<2, Self>; // 2 children
    type Ends = RefsSingle<Self>;   // root
}

pub struct DynamicTree<T> {
    p: PhantomData<T>,
}
impl<T> Variant for DynamicTree<T> {
    type Item = T;
    type Prev = RefsSingle<Self>;   // parent
    type Next = RefsVec<Self>;      // n children
    type Ends = RefsSingle<Self>;   // root
}

NodeIndex

NodeIndex belongs in the intersection of the two features efficient and safe.

A NodeIndex is a struct holding a reference to an element of the collection. It provides constant time access to the element. Furthermore, a node index can be stored independently of the collection, elsewhere.

In this sense NodeIndex to a SelfRefCol is sort of analogous to usize to standard Vec.

However, it puts a special emphasis on safety and correctness. The following invalid uses cannot happen with NodeIndex and SelfRefCol. The following safety guarantees are provided by the self referential collection:

• cannot use a NodeIndex on a wrong SelfRefCol
• cannot use a NodeIndex after the corresponding element is removed
• cannot use a NodeIndex after a reorganization of the elements

Crates using SelfRefCol

The following crates use SelfRefCol to conveniently build the corresponding data structure:

• orx-linked-list: implements singly and doubly linked lists.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you notice an error, have a question or think something could be improved, please open an issue or create a PR.

License

This library is licensed under MIT license. See LICENSE for details.