Type inference not working well with ptr mutability
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- Dominant language
- Rust
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Description
I tried this code:
fn main() {
let mut tmp: usize = 3;
let immut_addr = &tmp as *const _;
let addr = immut_addr.cast_mut();
}
I expected to see this happen: the code compiles successfully (but with unused warnings)
Instead, this happened: The compiler fails to infer the type of addr because it doesn't recognize that the type it inferred for immut_addr is always the same as the one cast_mut produces
On stable the compiler suggests to add : *const _ to immut_addr as a type annotation, but after adding this, it errors the same way it did before.
Meta
rustc --version --verbose:
This happens both on stable (1.78) and on the latest nightly
rustc 1.80.0-nightly (1fffb2a35 2024-04-28)
binary: rustc
commit-hash: 1fffb2a355dfee65bf6aa5a9db35f33d3ee93aec
commit-date: 2024-04-28
host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
release: 1.80.0-nightly
LLVM version: 18.1.4
Output
error[E0699]: cannot call a method on a raw pointer with an unknown pointee type
--> src/main.rs:6:27
|
6 | let addr = immut_addr.cast_mut();
|
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reproducing the snippet in src/main.rs with the reported stable and nightly rustc versions, then investigate how raw-pointer type inference handles cast_mut. Done means the example compiles without requiring an annotation and the behavior is covered by an appropriate compiler regression test.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- compilers
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100