core: Rewrite docs for try_as_dyn

[jnkel]

Update the documentation for try_as_dyn to resolve confusion some people had about the feature, provide better examples, and promise less.

In particular, this PR updates the documentation to never promise success, allowing for spurious failures for even "simple" cases. This reflects the general consensus in https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/213817-t-lang/topic/try_as_dyn.20potential.20problematic.20implications/near/621331808, since the precise rules of the implementation can be quite subtle and difficult to explain to users. Instead, document the function as being best-effort and able to produce false negatives, with non-exhaustive examples of situations where it produces false negatives in practice. We can always make the guarantees stricter in the future.

Also replaces the "animal-cat-dog" style example with more realistic use cases of try_as_dyn for performance and debugging.

cc @oli-obk

Rendered

Returns Some(&U) if T can be coerced to the dyn trait type U. Otherwise, it returns None.

Warning

This function is implemented on a best-effort basis. It is not always possible to determine
whether a generic type implements a trait; thus, this function may produce false negatives,
returning None even when T implements the requested trait.

try_as_dyn is guaranteed to return None if T does not implement the requested trait, but
it is never guaranteed to return Some. It is intended to be used for performance
optimizations and debugging, and try_as_dyn succeeding for a particular type should never be
relied upon for correctness (i.e. callers must behave correctly even if try_as_dyn spuriously
returns None).

Examples of false negatives

Some examples of situations where try_as_dyn::<T, dyn Trait> returns None in practice even
when T implements Trait:

• T's impl for Trait is lifetime-dependent
• T's impl for Trait is a builtin impl (e.g. dyn Debug implements Debug)
• T's impl for Trait has a trait bound which requires transitively reasoning about
  lifetime-dependent or builtin impls

This list is not exhaustive. There is some detailed documentation about these limitations at
https://doc.rust-lang.org/unstable-book/library-features/try-as-dyn.html But the gist is
summarized below:

Lifetime-dependent impls

try_as_dyn does not have access to lifetime information, thus it cannot differentiate between
'static and other lifetimes and cannot reason about outlives bounds on impls. Thus it cannot
reason about impls that have 'static lifetimes or outlives bounds of any kind. ///

The following impls are lifetime-dependent and produce false negatives when used with
try_as_dyn:

# trait Trait<'a, T> {}
# struct Type<'b, U>(&'b U);
# use std::fmt::{Debug, Display};
// impl mentions a 'static lifetime
impl<'a, T: Debug, U: Display> Trait<'a, T> for Type<'static, U> {}

# trait Trait<'a, T> {}
# struct Type<'b, U>(&'b U);
# use std::fmt::{Debug, Display};
// impl contains an outlives bound
impl<'a, 'b, T: Debug, U: Display> Trait<'a, T> for Type<'b, U>
    where 'b: 'a {}

Impls that mention a generic parameter more than once are lifetime-depndent and produce false
negatives, even if they don't expressly mention any lifetimes:

# trait Trait<T> {}
// impl mentions T more than once, creating an implied lifetime dependence
impl<T> Trait<T> for T {}

The following impl is lifetime-independent, because even though it mentions lifetimes,
implementation of the trait is not conditional over the lifetimes:

# trait Trait<'a, T> {}
# struct Type<'b, U>(&'b U);
# use std::fmt::{Debug, Display};
impl<'a, 'b, T: Debug, U: Display> Trait<'a, T> for Type<'b, U> {}

Impls without generic parameters at all are also lifetime-independent, as long as they contain
no 'static lifetimes.

Builtin impls

Builtin impls (like impl Debug for dyn Debug, or automatic implementations of Send and
Sync) have various obscure rules and often are not fully generic. To simplify reasoning about
what is allowed and what not, all builtin impls are rejected and will neither directly nor
indirectly contribute to a Some result.

Compile-time failures

Determining whether T can be coerced to the dyn trait type U requires compiler trait resolution.
In some cases, that resolution can exceed the recursion limit,
and compilation will fail instead of this function returning None.

The input type T must outlive the lifetime 'a on the dyn Trait + 'a.
This is basically the same rule that forbids let x: &dyn Trait + 'static = &&some_local_variable;
So if you see borrow check errors around try_as_dyn, think about whether a normal unsizing
coercion would be possible at all if you were using concrete types or had bounds on the input type.

Examples

Using try_as_dyn to use bytewise comparison instead of PartialEq for certain types, similar to
the standard library's optimization for slices:

#![feature(try_as_dyn)]
                                                                                                     
use core::any::try_as_dyn;
                                                                                                     
/// Compares two objects for equality,
fn eq<T: PartialEq + ?Sized>(x: &T, y: &T) -> bool {
    if try_as_dyn::<T, dyn BytewiseEq>(&x).is_some() {
        // T implements BytewiseEq, so we cast the slices to u8 and compare their bytes
        // instead of calling PartialEq on each individual element.
        unsafe {
            // SAFETY: x and y are valid for reads of size_of::<T>() bytes
            // BytewiseEq trait guarantees we can interperet these bytes as u8's
            // and compare them for equality
            let x = &*core::ptr::slice_from_raw_parts(
                (&raw const *x).cast::<u8>(),
                core::mem::size_of_val(x),
            );
            let y = &*core::ptr::slice_from_raw_parts(
                (&raw const *y).cast::<u8>(),
                core::mem::size_of_val(y),
            );
                                                                                                     
            x == y
        }
    } else {
        // T does not implement BytewiseEq, or try_as_dyn returned a false negative.
        // Fallback to PartialEq.
        //
        // BytewiseEq guarantees bytewise comparison and PartialEq will produce the same
        // results, so our code behaves correctly if try_as_dyn produces false negatives.
        x == y
    }
}
                                                                                                     
/// Marker trait for types that can be compared for equality
/// using a bytewise comparison (i.e. memcmp).
///
/// Implementations must ensure the type contains no uninitialized bytes,
/// and that a bytewise comparison will produce the same result as PartialEq.
unsafe trait BytewiseEq {}
                                                                                                     
unsafe impl BytewiseEq for u8 {}
unsafe impl BytewiseEq for u16 {}
unsafe impl BytewiseEq for u32 {}
                                                                                                     
// u16 implements BytewiseEq, so eq::<u16> will use bytewise comparison
// (unless try_as_dyn returns a false negative)
assert!(eq(&5u16, &5u16));
                                                                                                     
// f32 does not implement BytewiseEq, so eq::<f32> will use element-wise comparison
assert!(eq(&5f32, &5f32));

Using try_as_dyn for debugging:

#![feature(try_as_dyn)]
                                                                                                     
use core::any::{try_as_dyn, type_name};
use core::fmt::Debug;
                                                                                                     
/// Prints a value of type T, attempting to use its Debug implementation with try_as_dyn.
fn debug_println<T: ?Sized>(x: &T) {
    if let Some(debug) = try_as_dyn::<T, dyn Debug>(x) {
        println!("{:?}", debug);
    } else {
        // T does not implement Debug, or try_as_dyn returned a false negative.
        // Print the name of the type instead.
        //
        // We're not relying on this for correctness; it's just for debugging,
        // so we can tolerate false negatives.
        println!("<{}>", type_name::<T>());
    }
}
                                                                                                     
/// This type does not implement Debug.
struct NoDebug;
                                                                                                     
// Prints "Hello, world!" unless try_as_dyn returns a false negative.
debug_println(&"Hello, world!");
                                                                                                     
// Prints the name of the type, since it does not have a Debug implementation.
debug_println(&NoDebug);
                                                                                                     
// The current implementation of try_as_dyn gives a false positive in this case!
debug_println(&"Hello, world!" as &dyn Debug);

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• Owners of files modified in this PR: libs
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[oli-obk]

@bors squash msg="core: Rewrite docs for try_as_dyn"

[rust-bors]

🔨 2 commits were squashed into ed74429.

[oli-obk]

hm damn, that made it coauthored by me :( I was hoping it would just be your commit. Oh well. lgtm, you may want to force push the commit so it is just yours

[oli-obk]

@bors r+ rollup

[rust-bors]

📌 Commit 58c9d2f has been approved by oli-obk

It is now in the queue for this repository.