Module circuit_playground_express::paste

The nightly-only concat_idents! macro in the Rust standard library is notoriously underpowered in that its concatenated identifiers can only refer to existing items, they can never be used to define something new.

This crate provides a flexible way to paste together identifiers in a macro, including using pasted identifiers to define new items.

This approach works with any stable or nightly Rust compiler 1.30+.

Pasting identifiers

There are two entry points, paste::expr! for macros in expression position and paste::item! for macros in item position.

Within either one, identifiers inside [<...>] are pasted together to form a single identifier.

extern crate paste;

// Macro in item position: at module scope or inside of an impl block.
paste::item! {
    // Defines a const called `QRST`.
    const [<Q R S T>]: &str = "success!";
}

fn main() {
    // Macro in expression position: inside a function body.
    assert_eq!(
        paste::expr! { [<Q R S T>].len() },
        8,
    );
}

More elaborate examples

This program demonstrates how you may want to bundle a paste invocation inside of a more convenient user-facing macro of your own. Here the routes!(A, B) macro expands to a vector containing ROUTE_A and ROUTE_B.

extern crate paste;

const ROUTE_A: &str = "/a";
const ROUTE_B: &str = "/b";

macro_rules! routes {
    ($($route:ident),*) => {{
        paste::expr! {
            vec![$( [<ROUTE_ $route>] ),*]
        }
    }}
}

fn main() {
    let routes = routes!(A, B);
    assert_eq!(routes, vec!["/a", "/b"]);
}

The next example shows a macro that generates accessor methods for some struct fields.

extern crate paste;

macro_rules! make_a_struct_and_getters {
    ($name:ident { $($field:ident),* }) => {
        // Define a struct. This expands to:
        //
        //     pub struct S {
        //         a: String,
        //         b: String,
        //         c: String,
        //     }
        pub struct $name {
            $(
                $field: String,
            )*
        }

        // Build an impl block with getters. This expands to:
        //
        //     impl S {
        //         pub fn get_a(&self) -> &str { &self.a }
        //         pub fn get_b(&self) -> &str { &self.b }
        //         pub fn get_c(&self) -> &str { &self.c }
        //     }
        paste::item! {
            impl $name {
                $(
                    pub fn [<get_ $field>](&self) -> &str {
                        &self.$field
                    }
                )*
            }
        }
    }
}

make_a_struct_and_getters!(S { a, b, c });

fn call_some_getters(s: &S) -> bool {
    s.get_a() == s.get_b() && s.get_c().is_empty()
}

Macros

expr	Paste identifiers within a macro invocation that expands to an expression.