rust-lang / rust-lang/rust

Tracking Issue for `ip_as_octets`

Open
#137,259 2 comments 8 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

C-tracking-issue T-libs
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
119k
Forks
16.1k
PR merge metrics
PR metrics pending

Description

Feature gate: #![feature(ip_as_octets)]

This is a tracking issue for enabling reference access to IpAddr, Ipv4Addr, and Ipv6Addr contents. Previously, only an array copy was exposed via .octets().

Public API
impl core::net::IpAddr {
    pub const fn as_octets(&self) -> &[u8];
}

impl core::net::Ipv4Addr {
    pub const fn as_octets(&self) -> &[u8; 4];
}

impl core::net::Ipv6Addr {
    pub const fn as_octets(&self) -> &[u8; 16];
}
Steps / History
Unresolved Questions
  • @tgross35 offered a potential alternative in the ACP: that we instead provide #[repr(transparent)] for these types and document layout stability, leaving transmutation to a byte slice to third-party libraries.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the public API entry points in core::net::IpAddr, Ipv4Addr, and Ipv6Addr, then review the completed implementation in #136609 and the alternative discussed in libs-team issue #535. Done would require resolving the layout-stability question, completing the final comment period, and producing a stabilization PR.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
api, backend-api-design
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.