[std] and [no_std]?
The #![no_std] attribute in the first line of the program indicates that the program will not make use of the standard library, the std crate. Instead, it will use the core library, a subset of the standard library that does not depend on an underlying operating system (OS). It is completely platform agnostic, does not require upstream libraries, system libraries, or libc. It is necessary in environments, where this is the first code that is loaded. As a consequence, the core library does not provide all functionalities available within the std library.
Collections
The core library does not provide Vec, String, and HashMap, as they need a dynamic memory allocator (heap allocation), which core does not provide.
Without using other crates, you are restricted to types with a size known at compile time such as arrays and tuples.
Another type that works with a bit more flexibility in length are slices. A slice is a reference into a list of elements stored in contiguous memory. One way to create a slice is to take a reference to an array, a fixed-size list of elements stored in contiguous memory.
#![allow(unused)] fn main() { // stack allocated array let array: [u8; 3] = [0, 1, 2]; let ref_to_array: &[u8; 3] = &array; let slice: &[u8] = &array; }
slice and ref_to_array are constructed in the same way but have different types. ref_to_array is represented in memory as a single pointer (1 word / 4 bytes on a 32-bit platform); slice is represented as a pointer + length (2 words / 8 bytes on a 32 bit platform).
Because slices track length at runtime rather than at compile time, they can refer to chunks of memory of any length.
#![allow(unused)] fn main() { let array1: [u8; 3] = [0, 1, 2]; let array2: [u8; 4] = [0, 1, 2, 3]; let mut slice: &[u8] = &array1; log::info!("{:?}", slice); // length = 3 // now point to the other array slice = &array2; log::info!("{:?}", slice); // length = 4 }
Another possibility for dealing with this problem:
The heapless crate, which provides static friendly data structures that don't require dynamic memory allocation, with a fixed maximum storage size.