rust-lang / rust-lang/rust

Can't call `unreachable!()` in const functions

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C-feature-request
Dominant language
Rust
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Description

I tried this code:

const fn foo() {
    unreachable!("Hello");
}

https://play.rust-lang.org/?version=stable&mode=debug&edition=2024&gist=921692a8d3cfdee072d1719552003961

I expected to see this happen:
Code compiles

Instead, this happened:

error[E0015]: cannot call non-const formatting macro in constant functions
 --> src/lib.rs:2:5
  |
2 |     unreachable!("Hello");
  |     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  |
  = note: calls in constant functions are limited to constant functions, tuple structs and tuple variants

This happens on both stable and nightly. Almost identical panic!() macro works fine, so I expect unreachable!() and todo!() to work as well, as long as no formatting is applied to the provided string.

Meta

rustc --version --verbose:

rustc 1.99.0-nightly (d0babd8b6 2026-07-15)
binary: rustc
commit-hash: d0babd8b6b05ef9bb65d42f928cef4129d64cf65
commit-date: 2026-07-15
host: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
release: 1.99.0-nightly
LLVM version: 22.1.8

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First steps

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Research direction

Reproduce the reported snippet in src/lib.rs using the linked Rust Playground, then trace how unreachable!() is expanded and checked in const functions. Done means the no-formatting invocation compiles like the analogous panic!() case, with regression coverage for the reported behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
55/100

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