Are nested structs supported in Rust?
StructRustStruct Problem Overview
When I try to declare a struct inside of another struct:
struct Test {
struct Foo {}
}
The compiler complains:
error: expected identifier, found keyword `struct`
--> src/lib.rs:2:5
|
2 | struct Foo {}
| ^^^^^^ expected identifier, found keyword
help: you can escape reserved keywords to use them as identifiers
|
2 | r#struct Foo {}
| ^^^^^^^^
error: expected `:`, found `Foo`
--> src/lib.rs:2:12
|
2 | struct Foo {}
| ^^^ expected `:`
I could not find any documentation in either direction; are nested structs even supported in Rust?
Struct Solutions
Solution 1 - Struct
No, they are not supported. You should use separate struct declarations and regular fields:
struct Foo {}
struct Test {
foo: Foo,
}
Solution 2 - Struct
They are not supported by Rust.
But you can write yourself a proc macro that emulates them. I have, it turns
structstruck::strike!{
struct Test {
foo: struct {}
}
}
into
struct Foo {}
struct Test {
foo: Foo,
}
You haven't explicitly said so, but I suspect that your goal for using nested structs is not more easily readable data structure declarations, but namespacing?
You can't actually have a struct named Test
and access Foo
as Test::Foo
, but you could make yourself a proc macro that at least automatically creates a mod test { Foo {} }
.