Strings, &str, and chars

An i32 walks up to a String and asks for its number. The String replies: "Sorry, you're not my type."

Rust splits "string" across three cooperating types:

• char is one Unicode scalar value (always 4 bytes).
• &str is a borrowed view into UTF-8 text. Cheap to pass around.
• String is an owned, growable UTF-8 buffer. You own the memory.

Before we go further, two words that show up everywhere in Rust:

• Owned means this value is mine; when I go out of scope, the memory behind it is freed. In C++ terms, it's the object held by std::unique_ptr; in Python or Java terms, it's the role of the variable that decides when the object can be collected. In Rust every heap value has exactly one owner at a time.
• Borrowed means I'm looking at someone else's value without taking it over. It's the equivalent of passing a const T& in C++, or handing out a read-only pointer in C. Borrows are written with an & (or &mut if you also want to mutate). The borrow has to end before the owner is dropped, and the compiler enforces that for you, ruling out use-after-free and dangling pointers.

The ownership model is why Rust has two string types in the first place: it tracks who owns each piece of data. The 30-second version: every value has one owner, the value is dropped when that owner goes out of scope, and you can borrow a value without taking it. The next chapter (moves and Copy) and the borrowing chapter make this hands-on, and a later memory chapter ties it together. For now just keep the mental picture of "one owner, many short-lived borrows."

The split between &str and String is what makes Rust strings both fast and safe. A function that just reads text takes &str; a function that produces new text returns String. You'll see this rhythm again and again:

fn shout(text: &str) -> String {
    text.to_uppercase()
}

let s = String::from("hello");
let louder = shout(&s); // &String coerces to &str

• &str ("string slice", pronounced stir) is a borrowed view into text that lives elsewhere. Taking name: &str means "I just need to read this string; I'm not taking ownership of it."
• String is owned and heap-allocated. Returning -> String means the caller gets a fresh, owned value back.

A common gotcha: s.len() returns the number of bytes, not characters. For character counts use s.chars().count(). UTF-8 means a single visible character can take more than one byte.

You'll also meet .chars() a lot. It returns an iterator of char, and iterators have many useful adapters like .next(), .count(), and .any(...) (more on iterators in the iterators chapter).

Building a String with format!

The fastest way to assemble a new String is the format! macro. It works like println!, except instead of printing, it returns the formatted text:

let name = "Alice";
let greeting: String = format!("Hello, {name}!");

A few things worth noticing:

• The {name} inside the string is a captured identifier. Rust pulls the variable from the surrounding scope. (Pre-2021 code uses format!("Hello, {}!", name) instead; both still work.)
• The macro returns a String, ready to return from your function.
• The exclamation mark (!) means it's a macro, not a regular function call. You'll learn what that distinction buys you later; for now, treat it as a quirky bit of punctuation.

A note on for loops

The simplest way to consume an iterator is a for loop:

for c in "hello".chars() {
    println!("{c}");
}

You can read it as "for each c produced by the iterator on the right, run the body once." The loop variable is a fresh binding scoped to each iteration. Anything that produces an iterator (a Vec, a slice, a HashMap, 0..10, ...) works on the right-hand side.

Where to look things up

You won't memorize Rust's std library, and you don't need to. Two things you can open in separate tabs right now:

• std::fmt contains everything the formatting macros can do (padding, precision, hex, debug output…).
• str: the inventory of operations available on any &str.

A welcome message

Time to put &str and String together. Implement format_welcome_message so it returns the string "Welcome, {name}!".

The signature already tells the story:

fn format_welcome_message(name: &str) -> String

You're handed a borrowed &str to read from, and you produce a fresh, owned String to hand back. The intro mentions println!, but println! prints; it returns (). The macro that builds a String for you to return is format!, which uses the same {name} placeholder syntax.

Counting characters

Your first encounter with &str. In many languages, asking for the "length" of a string gives you back the number of characters. In Rust, str::len returns the number of bytes in the underlying UTF-8 buffer, which only matches the character count for plain ASCII.

For "hello" the byte count and char count both happen to be 5, but "café" is 5 bytes and 4 chars. Reach for chars() when you want the character count.

Useful from the standard library

• str::chars iterates over the chars of a string. The starting point for almost any character-level work.
• Iterator::count consumes an iterator and returns how many items it produced.
• str::len is byte length, not character count. Useful, but not what you want here.

Borrow in, own out

This step is the canonical "borrowed in, owned out" pattern. The caller hands you a cheap &str view, and you give back a brand new String that they get to keep. You'll see this pattern over and over in real Rust code, so it's worth getting comfortable with the signature now.

Useful from the standard library

• str::to_uppercase and str::to_lowercase return new Strings with the case changed.
• String::from and str::to_string both create an owned String from a &str. Use whichever reads better.

Iterating over characters

Strings aren't directly indexable in Rust (because UTF-8 characters have varying widths), but you can iterate over their chars. A plain for c in text.chars() loop will work, and so will the iterator combinators like any or find, which usually express "is there at least one ..." checks more directly.

Useful from the standard library

• Iterator::any returns true if any item in the iterator matches a predicate. Stops at the first match, so it's cheap.
• char::is_uppercase and char::is_ascii_uppercase classify a single character. The Unicode-aware version is the safer default; the ASCII version is faster when you know the input is ASCII.

Wrapping up strings and chars

You worked with all three string types: counted UTF-8 characters correctly, took a &str and produced a fresh String, and walked a string character by character to answer a yes/no question.

What we learned

• &str is a borrowed view into UTF-8 text; String is an owned, growable buffer; char is one Unicode scalar value. Functions that read take &str, functions that produce return String.
• str::len is byte length, not character count. Use s.chars().count() when you mean characters.
• str::chars() returns an iterator. Anything that takes an iterator works on it: for c in s.chars(), s.chars().any(...), s.chars().count(), and so on.
• Case conversion (to_uppercase, to_lowercase) returns a new String. Originals are immutable.
• char::is_uppercase is the Unicode-aware classifier; the is_ascii_* family is faster when you know the input is ASCII.