Lifetimes in lambda-based iterators

Question

My questions seems to be closely related to Rust error "cannot infer an appropriate lifetime for borrow expression" when attempting to mutate state inside a closure returning an Iterator, but I think it's not the same. So, this

use std::iter;                                                                  

fn example(text: String) -> impl Iterator<Item = Option<String>> {            
    let mut i = 0;   
    let mut chunk = None;   
    iter::from_fn(move || {   
        if i <= text.len() {   
            let p_chunk = chunk;
            chunk = Some(&text[..i]);   
            i += 1;   
            Some(p_chunk.map(|s| String::from(s))) 
        } else {   
            None   
        }   
    })   
}   

fn main() {}

does not compile. The compiler says it cannot determine the appropriate lifetime for &text[..i]. This is the smallest example I could come up with. The idea being, there is an internal state, which is a slice of text, and the iterator returns new Strings allocated from that internal state. I'm new to Rust, so maybe it's all obvious, but how would I annotate lifetimes so that this compiles?

Note that this example is different from the linked example, because there point was passed as a reference, while here text is moved. Also, the answer there is one and half years old by now, so maybe there is an easier way.

EDIT: Added p_chunk to emphasize that chunk needs to be persistent across calls to next and so cannot be local to the closure but should be captured by it.

Answer 1

Your code is an example of attempting to create a self-referential struct, where the struct is implicitly created by the closure. Since both text and chunk are moved into the closure, you can think of both as members of a struct. As chunk refers to the contents in text, the result is a self-referential struct, which is not supported by the current borrow checker.

While self-referential structs are unsafe in general due to moves, in this case it would be safe because text is heap-allocated and is not subsequently mutated, nor does it escape the closure. Therefore it is impossible for the contents of text to move, and a sufficiently smart borrow checker could prove that what you're trying to do is safe and allow the closure to compile.

The answer to the [linked question] says that referencing through an Option is possible but the structure cannot be moved afterwards. In my case, the self-reference is created after text and chunk were moved in place, and they are never moved again, so in principle it should work.

Agreed - it should work in principle, but it is well known that the current borrow checker doesn't support it. The support would require multiple new features: the borrow checker should special-case heap-allocated types like Box or String whose moves don't affect references into their content, and in this case also prove that you don't resize or mem::replace() the closed-over String.

In this case the best workaround is the "obvious" one: instead of persisting the chunk slice, persist a pair of usize indices (or a Range) and create the slice when you need it.