Vector of objects belonging to a trait

Question

Consider the following code:

trait Animal {
    fn make_sound(&self) -> String;
}

struct Cat;
impl Animal for Cat {
    fn make_sound(&self) -> String {
        "meow".to_string()
    }
}

struct Dog;
impl Animal for Dog {
    fn make_sound(&self) -> String {
        "woof".to_string()
    }
}

fn main () {
    let dog: Dog = Dog;
    let cat: Cat = Cat;
    let v: Vec<Animal> = Vec::new();
    v.push(cat);
    v.push(dog);
    for animal in v.iter() {
        println!("{}", animal.make_sound());
    }
}

The compiler tells me that v is a vector of Animal when I try to push cat (type mismatch)

So, how can I make a vector of objects belonging to a trait and calls the corresponding trait method on each element?

Answer 1

Vec<Animal> is not legal, but the compiler can't tell you that because the type mismatch somehow hides it. If we remove the calls to push, the compiler gives us the following error:

<anon>:22:9: 22:40 error: instantiating a type parameter with an incompatible type `Animal`, which does not fulfill `Sized` [E0144]
<anon>:22     let mut v: Vec<Animal> = Vec::new();
                  ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The reason why that's not legal is that a Vec<T> stores many T objects consecutively in memory. However, Animal is a trait, and traits have no size (a Cat and a Dog are not guaranteed to have the same size).

To solve this problem, we need to store something that has a size in the Vec. The most straightforward solution is to wrap the values in a Box, i.e. Vec<Box<Animal>>. Box<T> has a fixed size (a "fat pointer" if T is a trait, a simple pointer otherwise).

Here's a working main:

fn main() {
    let dog: Dog = Dog;
    let cat: Cat = Cat;
    let mut v: Vec<Box<Animal>> = Vec::new();
    v.push(Box::new(cat));
    v.push(Box::new(dog));
    for animal in v.iter() {
        println!("{}", animal.make_sound());
    }
}