Converting number primitives (i32, f64, etc) to byte representations

Question

I am writing a library that encodes/decodes data to/from a binary format. Part of the format is numbers, which I'm using Rust's native primitive types for (like i8, i64, f32 etc.).

Is there an easy, built-in way to convert these data types into/from binary, i.e. convert a f64/f32/i64/etc. into a Vec<u8>? Likewise is there a way to convert 4 u8s (in a Vec<u8> say) into an f32?

Answer 1

As of Rust 1.32 you can use {to,from}_{ne,le,be}_bytes for integral types.

let begin = 1234_i32;
let bytes = begin.to_ne_bytes();
let and_back = i32::from_ne_bytes(bytes);

For floating point you still have to rely on prior methods.

Answer 2

Rust 1.40 has: {to,from}_{ne,le,be}_bytes.

Converting a number to bytes and back (works for floats and integers after rust 1.40):

let x = 65535_i32;
let x_bytes = x.to_be_bytes();                  // x_bytes = [0, 0, 255, 255]
let original_x = i32::from_be_bytes(x_bytes);   // original_x = 65535 = x

Converting float before Rust 1.40

Rust 1.32 has: {to,from}_{ne,le,be}_bytes (only for integers), to_bits, and from_bits.

Converting a float to bytes and back:

let y = 255.255_f32;
let y_bytes = y.to_bits().to_be_bytes();
let original_y = f32::from_bits(u32::from_be_bytes(y_bytes)); // original_y = 255.255 = y

According to the Rust documentation from_bits can have portability issues.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, there is no safe built-in support for reading/writing primitives from/to a byte array in Rust at the moment. There are several community libraries for that, however, byteorder being the most used one:

extern crate byteorder;

use byteorder::{LittleEndian, WriteBytesExt};
use std::mem;

fn main() {
    let i: i64 = 12345;
    let mut bs = [0u8; mem::size_of::<i64>()];
    bs.as_mut()
        .write_i64::<LittleEndian>(i)
        .expect("Unable to write");

    for i in &bs {
        println!("{:X}", i);
    }
}

Of course, you can always cast raw pointers. For example, you can turn *const i64 into *const i8 and then convert it into an appropriate byte slice &[u8]. However, this is easy to get wrong, unsafe and platform-dependent due to endiannness, so it should be used only as a last resort:

use std::{mem, slice};

fn main() {
    let i: i64 = 12345;
    let ip: *const i64 = &i;
    let bp: *const u8 = ip as *const _;
    let bs: &[u8] = unsafe { slice::from_raw_parts(bp, mem::size_of::<i64>()) };

    for i in bs {
        println!("{:X}", i);
    }
}