cannot borrow `*self` as mutable because it is also borrowed as immutable

Question

I want my struct function to call itself under special conditions. It worked when I had a HashMap as one of the fields, but it broke when I changed the HashMap to be a Vec. It doesn't even have to be used, which seems very weird and I can't find any reasonable explanation for this.

use std::vec::Vec;
use std::collections::HashMap;

struct Foo<'a> {
    bar: Vec<&'a str>
    //bar: HashMap<&'a str, &'a str>
}

impl<'a> Foo<'a> {
    pub fn new() -> Foo<'a> {
        Foo { bar: Vec::new() }
        //Foo { bar: HashMap::new() }
    }

    pub fn baz(&'a self) -> Option<int> {
        None
    }

    pub fn qux(&'a mut self, retry: bool) {
        let opt = self.baz();
        if retry { self.qux(false); }
    }
}

pub fn main() {
   let mut foo = Foo::new();
   foo.qux(true);
}

playpen: http://is.gd/GgMy79

Error:

<anon>:22:24: 22:28 error: cannot borrow `*self` as mutable because it is also borrowed as immutable
<anon>:22             if retry { self.qux(false); }
                                 ^~~~
<anon>:21:23: 21:27 note: previous borrow of `*self` occurs here; the immutable borrow prevents subsequent moves or mutable borrows of `*self` until the borrow ends
<anon>:21             let opt = self.baz();
                                ^~~~
<anon>:23:10: 23:10 note: previous borrow ends here
<anon>:20         pub fn qux(&'a mut self, retry: bool) {
<anon>:21             let opt = self.baz();
<anon>:22             if retry { self.qux(false); }
<anon>:23         }

How can I fix this? Could this be caused by #6268?

Remove the 'a in the definition of method baz(). Don't know why it causes it though. — Levans

Vladimir Matveev Vladimir Matveev · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-14T21:21:50

I guess I found the reason. This is HashMap definition:

pub struct HashMap<K, V, H = RandomSipHasher> {
    // All hashes are keyed on these values, to prevent hash collision attacks.
    hasher: H,

    table: RawTable<K, V>,

    // We keep this at the end since it might as well have tail padding.
    resize_policy: DefaultResizePolicy,
}

This is Vec definition:

pub struct Vec<T> {
    ptr: *mut T,
    len: uint,
    cap: uint,
}

The only difference is how type parameters are used. Now let's check this code:

struct S1<T> { s: Option<T> }
//struct S1<T> { s: *mut T }

struct Foo<'a> {
    bar: S1<&'a str>
}

impl<'a> Foo<'a> {
    pub fn new() -> Foo<'a> {  // '
        Foo { bar: S1 { s: None } }
        //Foo { bar: S1 { s: std::ptr::null_mut() } }
    }

    pub fn baz(&'a self) -> Option<int> {
        None
    }

    pub fn qux(&'a mut self, retry: bool) {
        let opt = self.baz();
        if retry { self.qux(false); }
    }
}

pub fn main() {
   let mut foo = Foo::new();
   foo.qux(true);
}

This one compiles. If you pick another definition for S1, with *mut T pointer, then the program fails with exactly this error.

This looks like a bug, somewhere around lifetime variance, I think.

Update submitted it here

cannot borrow `*self` as mutable because it is also borrowed as immutable

1 Answers