This error occurs when an attempt is made to borrow state past the end of the
lifetime of a type that implements the Drop trait.
Erroneous code example:
pub struct S<'a> { data: &'a mut String }
impl<'a> Drop for S<'a> {
fn drop(&mut self) { self.data.push_str("being dropped"); }
}
fn demo<'a>(s: S<'a>) -> &'a mut String { let p = &mut *s.data; p }Here, demo tries to borrow the string data held within its
argument s and then return that borrow. However, S is
declared as implementing Drop.
Structs implementing the Drop trait have an implicit destructor that
gets called when they go out of scope. This destructor gets exclusive
access to the fields of the struct when it runs.
This means that when s reaches the end of demo, its destructor
gets exclusive access to its &mut-borrowed string data. allowing
another borrow of that string data (p), to exist across the drop of
s would be a violation of the principle that &mut-borrows have
exclusive, unaliased access to their referenced data.
This error can be fixed by changing demo so that the destructor does
not run while the string-data is borrowed; for example by taking S
by reference:
pub struct S<'a> { data: &'a mut String }
impl<'a> Drop for S<'a> {
fn drop(&mut self) { self.data.push_str("being dropped"); }
}
fn demo<'a>(s: &'a mut S<'a>) -> &'a mut String { let p = &mut *(*s).data; p }Note that this approach needs a reference to S with lifetime 'a.
Nothing shorter than 'a will suffice: a shorter lifetime would imply
that after demo finishes executing, something else (such as the
destructor!) could access s.data after the end of that shorter
lifetime, which would again violate the &mut-borrow’s exclusive
access.