
Rust Web Development with Rocket
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A generic data type, generic type, or simply, generic, is a way for programming languages to be able to apply the same routine to different data types.
For example, we want to create a multiplication(a, b) -> c {}
function for different data types, u8
or f64
. If a language does not have a generic, a programmer might have to implement two different functions, for example, multiplication_u8(a: u8, b: u8) -> u8
and multiplication_f64(a: f64, b: f64) -> f64
. Creating two different functions might look simple, but as the application grows in complexity, the branching and figuring out which function to use will be more complex. If a language has a generic, then the problem of multiple functions can be solved by using a single function that can accept u8
and f64
.
In the Rust language, we can make a function to use generics by declaring the generics inside angle brackets after the function name as follows:
fn multiplication<T>...