Slices

A slice gives you a view into a larger collection:

1. fn main() {
2. let a: [i32; 6] = [10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60];
3. println!("a: {a:?}");

5. let s: &[i32] = &a[2..4];
6. println!("s: {s:?}");
7. }

Slices borrow data from the sliced type.
Question: What happens if you modify a[3]?
We create a slice by borrowing a and specifying the starting and ending indexes in brackets.
If the slice starts at index 0, Rust’s range syntax allows us to drop the starting index, meaning that &a[0..a.len()] and &a[..a.len()] are identical.
The same is true for the last index, so &a[2..a.len()] and &a[2..] are identical.
To easily create a slice of the full array, we can therefore use &a[..].
s is a reference to a slice of i32s. Notice that the type of s (&[i32]) no longer mentions the array length. This allows us to perform computation on slices of different sizes.
Slices always borrow from another object. In this example, a has to remain ‘alive’ (in scope) for at least as long as our slice.
The question about modifying a[3] can spark an interesting discussion, but the answer is that for memory safety reasons you cannot do it through a after you created a slice, but you can read the data from both a and s safely. More details will be explained in the borrow checker section.

6.4. Slices