Understanding Rust Structs: Data Grouping, Methods, and Static Functions

Structures in Rust: Similar to Classes or Dictionaries

In Rust, a struct is similar to classes in OOP languages (like Java or C++) or to dictionaries in languages like Python. A struct groups related fields together, much like key-value pairs, allowing you to create a cohesive data structure.

Here’s an example of a Pet struct in Rust:

struct Pet {
    name: String,
    age: u8,
    breed: String,
}

Instantiating an Object from a Struct

To create an instance of the Pet struct, you can assign values to each field like so:

let cat = Pet {
    name: String::from("Sunny"),
    age: 1,
    breed: String::from("Maine Coon"),
};

However, if you try to print the struct instance directly, you’ll run into an issue:

println!("{:?}", cat); // Pet` cannot be formatted using `{:?}`

Printing Structs: Deriving the Debug Trait

The reason printing doesn’t work right away is that Rust needs to know how to format the struct’s output. By adding the #[derive(Debug)] attribute to the struct definition, we automatically implement…