Iterating over a slice's values instead of references in Rust?

Question

When looping over a slice of structs, the value I get is a reference (which is fine), however in some cases it's annoying to have to write var as (*var) in many places.

Is there a better way to avoid re-declaring the variable?

fn my_fn(slice: &[MyStruct]) {
    for var in slice {
        let var = *var;  // <-- how to avoid this?

        // Without the line above, errors in comments occur:

        other_fn(var);  // <-- expected struct `MyStruct`, found reference

        if var != var.other {
            // ^^ trait `&MyStruct: std::cmp::PartialEq<MyStruct>>` not satisfied
            foo();
        }
    }
}

---

See: actual error output (more cryptic).

Answer 1

You can remove the reference by destructuring in the pattern:

//  |
//  v
for &var in slice {
    other_fn(var);
}

However, this only works for Copy-types! If you have a type that doesn't implement Copy but does implement Clone, you could use the cloned() iterator adapter; see Chris Emerson's answer for more information.

Answer 2

In some cases you can iterate directly on values if you can consume the iterable, e.g. using Vec::into_iter().

With slices, you can use cloned or copied on the iterator:

fn main() {
    let v = vec![1, 2, 3];
    let slice = &v[..];
    for u in slice.iter().cloned() {
        let u: usize = u; // prove it's really usize, not &usize
        println!("{}", u);
    }
}

This relies on the item implementing Clone or Copy, but if it doesn't you probably do want references after all.