Why does asserting on the result of Deref::deref f

Question

The following is the Deref example from The Rust Programming Language except I've added another assertion.

Why does the assert_eq with the deref also equal 'a'? Why do I need a * once I've manually called deref?

use std::ops::Deref;

struct DerefExample<T> {
    value: T,
}

impl<T> Deref for DerefExample<T> {
    type Target = T;

    fn deref(&self) -> &T {
        &self.value
    }
}

fn main() {
    let x = DerefExample { value: 'a' };
    assert_eq!('a', *x.deref()); // this is true
    // assert_eq!('a', x.deref()); // this is a compile error
    assert_eq!('a', *x); // this is also true
    println!("ok");
}

If I uncomment the line, I get this error:

error[E0308]: mismatched types
  --> src/main.rs:18:5
   |
18 |     assert_eq!('a', x.deref());
   |     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ expected char, found &char
   |
   = note: expected type `char`
              found type `&char`
   = help: here are some functions which might fulfill your needs:
           - .to_ascii_lowercase()
           - .to_ascii_uppercase()
   = note: this error originates in a macro outside of the current crate (in Nightly builds, run with -Z external-macro-backtrace for more info)

Answer 1

First, let's spell out the generic types for your specific example: 'a' is char, so we have:

impl Deref for DerefExample<char> {
    type Target = char;

    fn deref(&self) -> &char {
        &self.value
    }
}

Notably, the return type of deref is a reference to a char. Thus it shouldn't be surprising that, when you use just x.deref(), the result is a &char rather than a char. Remember, at that point deref is just another normal method — it's just implicitly invoked as part of some language-provided special syntax. *x, for example, will call deref and dereference the result, when applicable. x.char_method() and fn_taking_char(&x) will also call deref some number of times and then do something further with the result.

Why does deref return a reference to begin with, you ask? Isn't that circular? Well, no, it isn't circular: it reduces library-defined smart pointers to the built-in type &T which the compiler already knows how to dereference. By returning a reference instead of a value, you avoid a copy/move (which may not always be possible!) and allow &*x (or &x when it's coerced) to refer to the actual char that DerefExample holds rather than a temporary copy.

See also:

• Why is the return type of Deref::deref itself a reference?