Summary

Promote ! to be a full-fledged type equivalent to an enum with no variants.

Motivation

To understand the motivation for this it’s necessary to understand the concept of empty types. An empty type is a type with no inhabitants, ie. a type for which there is nothing of that type. For example consider the type enum Never {}. This type has no constructors and therefore can never be instantiated. It is empty, in the sense that there are no values of type Never. Note that Never is not equivalent to () or struct Foo {} each of which have exactly one inhabitant. Empty types have some interesting properties that may be unfamiliar to programmers who have not encountered them before.

  • They never exist at runtime. Because there is no way to create one.

  • They have no logical machine-level representation. One way to think about this is to consider the number of bits required to store a value of a given type. A value of type bool can be in two possible states (true and false). Therefore to specify which state a bool is in we need log2(2) ==> 1 bit of information. A value of type () can only be in one possible state (()). Therefore to specify which state a () is in we need log2(1) ==> 0 bits of information. A value of type Never has no possible states it can be in. Therefore to ask which of these states it is in is a meaningless question and we have log2(0) ==> undefined (or -∞). Having no representation is not problematic as safe code never has reason nor ability to handle data of an empty type (as such data can never exist). In practice, Rust currently treats empty types as having size 0.

  • Code that handles them never executes. Because there is no value that it could execute with. Therefore, having a Never in scope is a static guarantee that a piece of code will never be run.

  • They represent the return type of functions that don’t return. For a function that never returns, such as exit, the set of all values it may return is the empty set. That is to say, the type of all values it may return is the type of no inhabitants, ie. Never or anything isomorphic to it. Similarly, they are the logical type for expressions that never return to their caller such as break, continue and return.

  • They can be converted to any other type. To specify a function A -> B we need to specify a return value in B for every possible argument in A. For example, an expression that converts bool -> T needs to specify a return value for both possible arguments true and false:

    let foo: &'static str = match x {
  true  => "some_value",
  false => "some_other_value",
};

    Likewise, an expression to convert () -> T needs to specify one value, the value corresponding to ():

    let foo: &'static str = match x {
  ()  => "some_value",
};

    And following this pattern, to convert Never -> T we need to specify a T for every possible Never. Of which there are none:

    let foo: &'static str = match x {
};

    Reading this, it may be tempting to ask the question “what is the value of foo then?”. Remember that this depends on the value of x. As there are no possible values of x it’s a meaningless question and besides, the fact that x has type Never gives us a static guarantee that the match block will never be executed.

Here’s some example code that uses Never. This is legal rust code that you can run today.

use std::process::exit;

// Our empty type
enum Never {}

// A diverging function with an ordinary return type
fn wrap_exit() -> Never {
    exit(0);
}

// we can use a `Never` value to diverge without using unsafe code or calling
// any diverging intrinsics
fn diverge_from_never(n: Never) -> ! {
    match n {
    }
}

fn main() {
    let x: Never = wrap_exit();
    // `x` is in scope, everything below here is dead code.

    let y: String = match x {
        // no match cases as `Never` has no variants
    };

    // we can still use `y` though
    println!("Our string is: {}", y);

    // we can use `x` to diverge
    diverge_from_never(x)
}

This RFC proposes that we allow ! to be used directly, as a type, rather than using Never (or equivalent) in its place. Under this RFC, the above code could more simply be written.

use std::process::exit;

fn main() {
    let x: ! = exit(0);
    // `x` is in scope, everything below here is dead code.

    let y: String = match x {
        // no match cases as `Never` has no variants
    };

    // we can still use `y` though
    println!("Our string is: {}", y);

    // we can use `x` to diverge
    x
}

So why do this? AFAICS there are 3 main reasons

  • It removes one superfluous concept from the language and allows diverging functions to be used in generic code.

    Currently, Rust’s functions can be divided into two kinds: those that return a regular type and those that use the -> ! syntax to mark themselves as diverging. This division is unnecessary and means that functions of the latter kind don’t play well with generic code.

    For example: you want to use a diverging function where something expects a Fn() -> T

    fn foo() -> !;
fn call_a_fn<T, F: Fn() -> T>(f: F) -> T;

call_a_fn(foo) // ERROR!

    Or maybe you want to use a diverging function to implement a trait method that returns an associated type:

    trait Zog {
    type Output
    fn zog() -> Output;
};

impl Zog for T {
    type Output = !;                    // ERROR!
    fn zog() -> ! { panic!("aaah!") };  // ERROR!
}

    The workaround in these cases is to define a type like Never and use it in place of !. You can then define functions wrap_foo and unwrap_zog similar to the functions wrap_exit and diverge_from_never defined earlier. It would be nice if this workaround wasn’t necessary.

  • It creates a standard empty type for use throughout rust code.

    Empty types are useful for more than just marking functions as diverging. When used in an enum variant they prevent the variant from ever being instantiated. One major use case for this is if a method needs to return a Result<T, E> to satisfy a trait but we know that the method will always succeed.

    For example, here’s a saner implementation of FromStr for String than currently exists in libstd.

    impl FromStr for String {
    type Err = !;
    
    fn from_str(s: &str) -> Result<String, !> {
        Ok(String::from(s))
    }
}

    This result can then be safely unwrapped to a String without using code-smelly things like unreachable!() which often mask bugs in code.

    let r: Result<String, !> = FromStr::from_str("hello");
let s = match r {
    Ok(s)   => s,
    Err(e)  => match e {},
}

    Empty types can also be used when someone needs a dummy type to implement a trait. Because ! can be converted to any other type it has a trivial implementation of any trait whose only associated items are non-static methods. The impl simply matches on self for every method.

    Example:

    trait ToSocketAddr {
    fn to_socket_addr(&self) -> IoResult<SocketAddr>;
    fn to_socket_addr_all(&self) -> IoResult<Vec<SocketAddr>>;
}

impl ToSocketAddr for ! {
    fn to_socket_addr(&self) -> IoResult<SocketAddr> {
        match self {}
    }

    fn to_socket_addr_all(&self) -> IoResult<Vec<SocketAddr>> {
        match self {}
    }
}

    All possible implementations of this trait for ! are equivalent. This is because any two functions that take a ! argument and return the same type are equivalent - they return the same result for the same arguments and have the same effects (because they are uncallable).

    Suppose someone wants to call fn foo<T: SomeTrait>(arg: Option<T>) with None. They need to choose a type for T so they can pass None::<T> as the argument. However there may be no sensible default type to use for T or, worse, they may not have any types at their disposal that implement SomeTrait. As the user in this case is only using None, a sensible choice for T would be a type such that Option<T> can only be None, ie. it would be nice to use !. If ! has a trivial implementation of SomeTrait then the choice of T is truly irrelevant as this means foo doesn’t use any associated types/lifetimes/constants or static methods of T and is therefore unable to distinguish None::<A> from None::<B>. With this RFC, the user could impl SomeTrait for ! (if SomeTrait’s author hasn’t done so already) and call foo(None::<!>).

    Currently, Never can be used for all the above purposes. It’s useful enough that @reem has written a package for it here where it is named Void. I’ve also invented it independently for my own projects and probably other people have as well. However ! can be extended logically to cover all the above use cases. Doing so would standardise the concept and prevent different people reimplementing it under different names.

  • Better dead code detection

    Consider the following code:

    let t = std::thread::spawn(|| panic!("nope"));
t.join().unwrap();
println!("hello");

    Under this RFC: the closure body gets typed ! instead of (), the unwrap() gets typed !, and the println! will raise a dead code warning. There’s no way current rust can detect cases like that.

  • Because it’s the correct thing to do.

    The empty type is such a fundamental concept that - given that it already exists in the form of empty enums - it warrants having a canonical form of it built-into the language. For example, return and break expressions should logically be typed ! but currently seem to be typed (). (There is some code in the compiler that assigns type () to diverging expressions because it doesn’t have a sensible type to assign to them). This means we can write stuff like this:

    match break {
  ()  => ...  // huh? Where did that `()` come from?
}

    But not this:

    match break {} // whaddaya mean non-exhaustive patterns?

    This is just weird and should be fixed.

I suspect the reason that ! isn’t already treated as a canonical empty type is just most people’s unfamilarity with empty types. To draw a parallel in history: in C void is in essence a type like any other. However it can’t be used in all the normal positions where a type can be used. This breaks generic code (eg. T foo(); T val = foo() where T == void) and forces one to use workarounds such as defining struct Void {} and wrapping void-returning functions.

In the early days of programming having a type that contained no data probably seemed pointless. After all, there’s no point in having a void typed function argument or a vector of voids. So void was treated as merely a special syntax for denoting a function as returning no value resulting in a language that was more broken and complicated than it needed to be.

Fifty years later, Rust, building on decades of experience, decides to fix C’s shortsightedness and bring void into the type system in the form of the empty tuple (). Rust also introduces coproduct types (in the form of enums), allowing programmers to work with uninhabited types (such as Never). However rust also introduces a special syntax for denoting a function as never returning: fn() -> !. Here, ! is in essence a type like any other. However it can’t be used in all the normal positions where a type can be used. This breaks generic code (eg. fn() -> T; let val: T = foo() where T == !) and forces one to use workarounds such as defining enum Never {} and wrapping !-returning functions.

To be clear, ! has a meaning in any situation that any other type does. A ! function argument makes a function uncallable, a Vec<!> is a vector that can never contain an element, a ! enum variant makes the variant guaranteed never to occur and so forth. It might seem pointless to use a ! function argument or a Vec<!> (just as it would be pointless to use a () function argument or a Vec<()>), but that’s no reason to disallow it. And generic code sometimes requires it.

Rust already has empty types in the form of empty enums. Any code that could be written with this RFC’s ! can already be written by swapping out ! with Never (sans implicit casts, see below). So if this RFC could create any issues for the language (such as making it unsound or complicating the compiler) then these issues would already exist for Never.

It’s also worth noting that the ! proposed here is not the bottom type that used to exist in Rust in the very early days. Making ! a subtype of all types would greatly complicate things as it would require, for example, Vec<!> be a subtype of Vec<T>. This ! is simply an empty type (albeit one that can be cast to any other type)

Detailed design

Add a type ! to Rust. ! behaves like an empty enum except that it can be implicitly cast to any other type. ie. the following code is acceptable:

let r: Result<i32, !> = Ok(23);
let i = match r {
    Ok(i)   => i,
    Err(e)  => e, // e is cast to i32
}

Implicit casting is necessary for backwards-compatibility so that code like the following will continue to compile:

let i: i32 = match some_bool {
    true  => 23,
    false => panic!("aaah!"), // an expression of type `!`, gets cast to `i32`
}

match break {
    ()  => 23,  // matching with a `()` forces the match argument to be cast to type `()`
}

These casts can be implemented by having the compiler assign a fresh, diverging type variable to any expression of type !.

In the compiler, remove the distinction between diverging and converging functions. Use the type system to do things like reachability analysis.

Allow expressions of type ! to be explicitly cast to any other type (eg. let x: u32 = break as u32;)

Add an implementation for ! of any trait that it can trivially implement. Add methods to Result<T, !> and Result<!, E> for safely extracting the inner value. Name these methods along the lines of unwrap_nopanic, safe_unwrap or something.

Drawbacks

Someone would have to implement this.

Alternatives

  • Don’t do this.
  • Move @reem’s Void type into libcore. This would create a standard empty type and make it available for use in the standard libraries. If we were to do this it might be an idea to rename Void to something else (Never, Empty and Mu have all been suggested). Although Void has some precedence in languages like Haskell and Idris the name is likely to trip up people coming from a C/Java et al. background as Void is not void but it can be easy to confuse the two.

Unresolved questions

! has a unique impl of any trait whose only items are non-static methods. It would be nice if there was a way to automate the creation of these impls. Should ! automatically satisfy any such trait? This RFC is not blocked on resolving this question if we are willing to accept backward-incompatibilities in questionably-valid code which tries to call trait methods on diverging expressions and relies on the trait being implemented for (). As such, the issue has been given it’s own RFC.