From &str to Cow • Lukas Pustina

Yesterday’s note on The Secret Life of Cows shows how to use Cow as function return type when the function may return an owned type or a reference, e.g., String or a &str. Jow Wilm shows how to apply Cow in a data structure with an ergonomic constructor:

struct Token<'a> {
    raw: Cow<'a, str>
}

impl<'a> Token<'a> {
    pub fn new<S>(raw: S) -> Token<'a> where S: Into<Cow<'a, str>> {
        Token { raw: raw.into() }
    }
}

// Create the tokens.
let token = Token::new("abc123");
let token = Token::new(String::new("abc123"));