## Advanced Functions and Closures

Finally, we’ll explore some advanced features related to functions and
closures, which include function pointers and returning closures.

### Function Pointers

We’ve talked about how to pass closures to functions; you can also pass regular
functions to functions! This technique is useful when you want to pass a
function you’ve already defined rather than defining a new closure. Doing this
with function pointers will allow you to use functions as arguments to other
functions. Functions coerce to the type `fn` (with a lowercase f), not to be
confused with the `Fn` closure trait. The `fn` type is called a *function
pointer*. The syntax for specifying that a parameter is a function pointer is
similar to that of closures, as shown in Listing 19-35.

Filename: src/main.rs

```rust
fn add_one(x: i32) -> i32 {
    x + 1
}

fn do_twice(f: fn(i32) -> i32, arg: i32) -> i32 {
    f(arg) + f(arg)
}

fn main() {
    let answer = do_twice(add_one, 5);

    println!("The answer is: {}", answer);
}
```

Listing 19-35: Using the `fn` type to accept a function
pointer as an argument

This code prints `The answer is: 12`. We specify that the parameter `f` in
`do_twice` is an `fn` that takes one parameter of type `i32` and returns an
`i32`. We can then call `f` in the body of `do_twice`. In `main`, we can pass
the function name `add_one` as the first argument to `do_twice`.

Unlike closures, `fn` is a type rather than a trait, so we specify `fn` as the
parameter type directly rather than declaring a generic type parameter with one
of the `Fn` traits as a trait bound.

Function pointers implement all three of the closure traits (`Fn`, `FnMut`, and
`FnOnce`), so you can always pass a function pointer as an argument for a
function that expects a closure. It’s best to write functions using a generic
type and one of the closure traits so your functions can accept either
functions or closures.

An example of where you would want to only accept `fn` and not closures is when
interfacing with external code that doesn’t have closures: C functions can
accept functions as arguments, but C doesn’t have closures.

As an example of where you could use either a closure defined inline or a named
function, let’s look at a use of `map`. To use the `map` function to turn a
vector of numbers into a vector of strings, we could use a closure, like this:

```rust
let list_of_numbers = vec![1, 2, 3];
let list_of_strings: Vec<String> = list_of_numbers
    .iter()
    .map(|i| i.to_string())
    .collect();
```

Or we could name a function as the argument to `map` instead of the closure,
like this:

```rust
let list_of_numbers = vec![1, 2, 3];
let list_of_strings: Vec<String> = list_of_numbers
    .iter()
    .map(ToString::to_string)
    .collect();
```

Note that we must use the fully qualified syntax that we talked about earlier
in the [“Advanced Traits”][advanced-traits] section because
there are multiple functions available named `to_string`. Here, we’re using the
`to_string` function defined in the `ToString` trait, which the standard
library has implemented for any type that implements `Display`.

Another useful pattern exploits an implementation detail of tuple structs and
tuple-struct enum variants. These items use `()` as initializer syntax, which
looks like a function call. The initializers are actually implemented as
functions returning an instance constructed from their arguments. These
initializer functions can also be used as a function pointer that implements
the closure traits, so they can also be specified as arguments for methods that
take closures:

```rust
enum Status {
    Value(u32),
    Stop,
}

let list_of_statuses: Vec<Status> =
    (0u32..20)
    .map(Status::Value)
    .collect();
```

This code creates `Status::Value` instances using each `u32` value in the range
that `map` is called on by using the initializer function of `Status::Value`.
Some people prefer this style, and some people prefer to use closures. They end
up compiling to the same code, so use whichever style is clearer to you.

### Returning Closures

Closures are represented by traits, which means you can’t return closures
directly. In most cases where you might want to return a trait, you can instead
use the concrete type that implements the trait as the return value of the
function. But you can’t do that with closures because they don’t have a
concrete type that is returnable; you’re not allowed to use the function
pointer `fn` as a return type, for example.

The following code tries to return a closure directly, but it won’t compile:

```rust,ignore,does_not_compile
fn returns_closure() -> Fn(i32) -> i32 {
    |x| x + 1
}
```

The compiler error is as follows:

```text
error[E0277]: the trait bound `std::ops::Fn(i32) -> i32 + 'static:
std::marker::Sized` is not satisfied
 -->
  |
1 | fn returns_closure() -> Fn(i32) -> i32 {
  |                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ `std::ops::Fn(i32) -> i32 + 'static`
  does not have a constant size known at compile-time
  |
  = help: the trait `std::marker::Sized` is not implemented for
  `std::ops::Fn(i32) -> i32 + 'static`
  = note: the return type of a function must have a statically known size
```

The error references the `Sized` trait again! Rust doesn’t know how much space
it will need to store the closure. We saw a solution to this problem earlier.
We can use a trait object:

```rust
fn returns_closure() -> Box<dyn Fn(i32) -> i32> {
    Box::new(|x| x + 1)
}
```

This code will compile just fine. For more about trait objects, refer to the
[“Using Trait Objects That Allow for Values of Different Types”]
[using-trait-objects-that-allow-for-values-of-different-types]
section in Chapter 17.

Next, let’s look at macros!

[advanced-traits]:
ch19-03-advanced-traits.html#advanced-traits
[using-trait-objects-that-allow-for-values-of-different-types]:
ch17-02-trait-objects.html#using-trait-objects-that-allow-for-values-of-different-types
