In Rust, you don't specify mutability inside a struct, but it is inherited from the variable binding. That's great, but is it possible to force a field to be always immutable, even when the root is mutable?
Something like this hypothetical syntax:
struct A {
immut s: Shape, // immutable by design
bla: Bla, // this field inheriting (im)mutability
}
let mut a = make_a();
a.s = x/*...*/; // illegal
This would help to maintain nice semantic restrictions in a program, just like Java's final does (in a very limited way).
Also, we could imagine this kind of struct having some non-owning references to internal immutable data, taking advantage of this immutability...
It's impossible to have immutability of a single field. That was an option in an ancient version of Rust (think before 0.8), but it was dropped because the rules confused a LOT of people. How was it confusing, you might ask? Think about it like this: if a field is declared mutable and struct is declared mutable and the reference used was an immutable reference (&) then the field is _______.
The best, as Lily Ballard noted, is that you can declare your Shape field as private and make a getter method using impl A {...}.
mod inner {
pub struct A {
s: i32, // can't be seen outside of module
pub bla: i32,
}
impl A {
pub fn new() -> Self {
Self { s: 0, bla: 42 }
}
pub fn get_s(&self) -> i32 {
self.s
}
}
}
let mut a = inner::A::new();
a.s = 42; // illegal
println!("{}", a.s); // also illegal
println!("{}", a.get_s()); // could be made to serve as a read-only method
error[E0616]: field `s` of struct `main::inner::A` is private
--> src/main.rs:20:5
|
20 | a.s = 42; // illegal
| ^^^
error[E0616]: field `s` of struct `main::inner::A` is private
--> src/main.rs:21:20
|
21 | println!("{}", a.s); // also illegal
| ^^^
There is proposition that might drop notions of mutability and immutability completely (you can't say a struct never changes). See Niko's explanation for that change.