CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rustlifetimeselfborrow-checkermutable
Manuel Etchegaray
Manuel Etchegaray

Reputation: 21

making a Vec<Child> containing reference to Parent struct?

Im new to Rust, and i'm having this problem where I need to keep a Vec of Child in the Parent struct, and each child needs to be able to use the Parent functions, so with some research I ended up with this, however , its not really working, as I always end up with the same error:

Cannot borrow self.children as mutable, as it is behind a & reference self is a & reference, so the data it refers to cannot be borrowed as mutable)*

This is a simplified version of my real code, but it has the same problem. I need to do the add_child from within Parent, because in the real code it has more functionality that depends on the Parent that helps create the Child.

struct Parent<'a> {
    children: Vec<Child<'a>>,
}

impl<'b> Parent<'b> {
    fn add_child(&'b self) -> () {
        let child = Child::new(&self);
        self.children.push(child);
    }

    fn do_stuff(&self) -> () {
        self.add_child();
        self.add_child();
    }
}

struct Child<'a> {
    parent: &'a Parent<'a>,
}

impl<'a> Child<'a> {
    fn new(parent: &'a Parent<'a>) -> Child<'a> {
        Child { parent }
    }
}

I also came up with some different workarounds, like defining Vec<Child> outside the Parent struct, in the main fn, but that doesnt really help me, because I need to use them in Parent later.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 161

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