Re: [PATCH 1/2] rust: Zeroable: allow struct update syntax outside init macros

[Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>]

On 11/28/24 15:40, Alice Ryhl wrote:
>> The definition of the ZERO constant requires adding a Sized boundary, but
>> this is not a problem either because neither slices nor trait objects
>> are zeroable.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
> 
> Slices are zeroable. I know they don't implement the trait,

Right, I should have used the uppercase "Zeroable" for clarity.

> but they could implement it, and this could be used to implement e.g.:
> 
> pub fn write_zero<T: Zeroed + ?Sized>(value: &mut T) {
>      memset(0, ...);
> }

Yeah, that would be I think

     pub fn write_zero<T: Zeroable + ?Sized>(value: &mut T) {
         unsafe {
            ptr::write_bytes((value as *mut T).cast::<u8>(), 0,
                             std::mem::size_of_val(value))
         }
     }

?  And it works for both sized values and slices.  If Zeroable is 
limited to sized types, I guess you could still do:

     pub fn write_zero_slice<T: Zeroable>(value: &mut [T]) {
         ptr::write_bytes(value.as_mut_ptr(), 0, value.len())
     }

So the question is whether the ZERO constant is worthwhile enough, to 
justify the limitation of the Sized bound (e.g. having separate 
write_zero and write_zero_slice in the future).

Thanks,

Paolo