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@ -81,9 +81,33 @@ consider passing in `0` as Undefined Behaviour.
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Rust also enables types to be declared that *cannot even be instantiated*. These
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Rust also enables types to be declared that *cannot even be instantiated*. These
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types can only be talked about at the type level, and never at the value level.
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types can only be talked about at the type level, and never at the value level.
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Empty types can be declared by specifying an enum with no variants:
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```rust
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```rust
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enum Foo { } // No variants = EMPTY
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enum Void {} // No variants = EMPTY
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```
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```
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TODO: WHY?!
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Empty types are even more marginal than ZSTs. The primary motivating example for
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Void types is type-level unreachability. For instance, suppose an API needs to
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return a Result in general, but a specific case actually is infallible. It's
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actually possible to communicate this at the type level by returning a
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`Result<T, Void>`. Consumers of the API can confidently unwrap such a Result
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knowing that it's *statically impossible* for this value to be an `Err`, as
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this would require providing a value of type Void.
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In principle, Rust can do some interesting analysees and optimizations based
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on this fact. For instance, `Result<T, Void>` could be represented as just `T`,
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because the Err case doesn't actually exist. Also in principle the following
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could compile:
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```rust,ignore
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enum Void {}
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let res: Result<u32, Void> = Ok(0);
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// Err doesn't exist anymore, so Ok is actually irrefutable.
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let Ok(num) = res;
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```
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But neither of these tricks work today, so all Void types get you today is
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the ability to be confident that certain situations are statically impossible.
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