arranged

A Rust ranged-type library.

arranged is ranged type crate for Rust. Note: This crate is currently pre-alpha and is still under construction.

Goals

arranged is a pathfinder implementation to safe default arithmetic manipulation of values in Rust--no arithmetic operation should ever fail (panic) due to overflow at runtime (unless the user explicitly requests a panic)--while supporting ergonomics via conventional arithmetic operators (+, -, *, /, %, etc.).

Design Philosophy

The Ranged type is designed to be zero-runtime overhead where possible and minimal runtime overhead otherwise:

• all bounds-checking on arithmetic operations between two unwrapped Ranged types occurs at compile-time
• mem::size_of::<Ranged<T>>() == mem::size_of::<T>() (i.e. ranges are zero-sized). Performance & cache-friendly, esp. when operating on large quantities of values

Behavior

• Ranged<T> {op} Ranged<U> yields Range<V> and is compile-time bounds checked (where {op} represents an arithmetic operation, and T, U and V represent Ranges of values of the same machine word type). Any possible overflow fails to compile.
• Ranged<T> {op} *Wrapper<Ranged<U>> yields Ranged<T>, is runtime bounds-checked and handles overflow according to* policy, where * is one of Checked, Overflowing, Panicking, Saturating or Wrapping overflow policies.
• Ranged<T> {op} {scalar} does not compile because policy is unspecified
• Ranged<T> {op} *Wrapper<{scalar}> yields Ranged<T>, is runtime bounds-checked and handles overflow according to* policy
• {scalar} {op} Ranged<T> does not compile because policy is unspecified
• {scalar} {op} *Wrapper<{scalar}> yields *Wrapper<{scalar}>, is runtime bounds-checked and handles overflow according to * policy
• {scalar} {op} *Wrapper<Ranged<T>> yields *Wrapper<Ranged<T>>, is runtime bounds-checked and handles overflow according to * policy
• *Wrapper<Ranged<T>> {op} Ranged<U> yields *Wrapper<Ranged<V>>, is compile-time bounds checked and handles overflow according to * policy
• *Wrapper<Ranged<T>> {op} †Wrapper<Ranged<U>> yields *Wrapper<Ranged<T>>, is runtime bounds checked and handles overflow according to * policy. † policy is ignored.
• *Wrapper<Ranged<T> {op} {scalar} yields *Wrapper<"Ranged<T>>, is runtime bounds checked and handles overflow according to * policy.

Implementation plan

• unify existing Rust arithmetic overflow policies under arithmetic traits + add Panicking policy (arith_traits)
• establish initial implementation of one arithmetic *Wrapper type (arith_wrappers) to support rapid PoC
• design and implement one initial Range statically bounds verifiable, zero-sized integer type, addressing concerns 1, 2 as a rapid PoC
• design and implement Ranged type to bring together the concept of Ranges and values into a single type
• implement one Ranged arithmetic operation covering all variations listed above, without and with one wrapper type as PoC.
• verify implementation is zero runtime overhead or low runtime overhead in release mode
• extend pathfinder implementation to support f32 and f64

— !! pathfinder complete !! — if successful:

• implement remaining arith_traits
• implement remaining arith_wrappers
• implement remaining arithmetic operators for Ranged<Ri*> (where Ri is arranged’s range-inclusive type and * represents any int and float machine word types or BigInt or BigUint)
• implement R (half-open range) type
• implement remaining arithmetic operators for Ranged<R*> (where R is arranged’s (half-open) range type and * represents any int and float machine word types or BigInt or BigUint)
• consider priority of implementing additional range types (JIT/as-needed basis?)

What problem is arranged addressing?

Rust has made terrific progress moving the safety and correctness needle without sacrificing performance. And yet we are still saddled with C’s arithmetic model from the early 1970's which does a very poor job of providing predictable behavior in important real-world safety scenarios--Ariane 5 initial launch, analysis.

As software eats more and more of the world, the importance of performant, ergonomic, ‘safe by default’ systems increases.

Beyond arranged

Explore leveraging arranged as part of a more comprehensive “semantic types” implementation in Rust, hopefully further addressing safety concerns such as NASA losing a $300M+ mission

Usage

// Create a `u8`-based `RangeInclusive`-style type limited to `1..=100`, set to the value 42
let my_ranged_value = Ranged::<RiU8<1, 100>>::from(42);

For more examples, see ranged::unit_tests.

License

Licensed under either:

• MIT license (see LICENSE-MIT file)
• Apache License, Version 2.0 (see LICENSE-APACHE file) at your option.

Contributions

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.