rust - Why can I iterate over a slice twice, but not a vector?

Question

If I try to iterate over a slice twice, it works fine:

let a = &[1, 2, 3];
for i in a {
    println!("{}", i);
}
for i in a {            // works fine
    println!("{}", i);
}

If I try to iterate over a vector twice, it fails:

let a = vec![1, 2, 3];
for i in a {
    println!("{}", i);
}
for i in a {
    println!("{}", i);
}

error[E0382]: use of moved value: `a`
 --> src/main.rs:6:14
  |
3 |     for i in a {
  |              - value moved here
...
6 |     for i in a {
  |              ^ value used here after move
  |
  = note: move occurs because `a` has type `std::vec::Vec<i32>`, which does not implement the `Copy` trait

I see that the IntoIterator trait takes self by value, so it makes sense to me that the second example fails. Why does the first example succeed?

Answer 1

Like you said, for works by taking the thing you asked it to iterate over, and passing it through IntoIterator::into_iter to produce the actual iterator value. Also as you said, into_iter takes the subject by value.

So, when you try to iterate over a Vector directly, this means you pass the entire vector, by value, into its IntoIterator implementation, thus consuming the vector in the process. Which is why you can't iterate over a vector directly twice: iterating over it the first time consumes it, after which it no longer exists.

However, slices are different: a slice is an immutable, borrowed pointer to its data; immutable, borrowed pointers can be copied freely. This means that the IntoIterator for immutable slices just borrows the data and doesn't consume it (not that it could). Or, to look at it another way, its IntoIterator implementation is simply taking a copy of the slice, whereas you can't copy a Vec.

It should be noted that you can iterate over a Vec without consuming it by iterating over a borrow. If you check the documentation for Vec, you'll note that it lists implementations of IntoIterator for Vec<T>, &Vec<T> and &mut Vec<T>.

let mut a: Vec<i32> = vec![1, 2, 3];

for i in &a {           // iterate immutably
    let i: &i32 = i;    // elements are immutable pointers
    println!("{}", i);
}

for i in &mut a {       // iterate mutably
    let i: &mut i32 = i;// elements are mutable pointers
    *i *= 2;
}

for i in a {            // iterate by-value
    let i: i32 = i;     // elements are values
    println!("{}", i);
}

// `a` no longer exists; it was consumed by the previous loop.