11

I hope it's ok to ask for some feedback here. Of not, please let me know. The rules did not sound like against it

I'm very new to Rust. And while in general my coding background is ok, Rust still feels alien to me. I think I'm just still at "how to think in Rust" part of the curve.

So I would like to ask here for opinions on the following bit of code. I know that those unwrap are too optimistic for production, and I could figure out how to pass io::Error from the function all the way up to the shell. But what are other choices that I don't see?
What would you write differently? What looks like Pythonisms/C++isms? Or is missing the mark completely?

use std::{fs, io};  
use std::path::PathBuf;  
use std::convert::TryFrom;  

use clap::Parser;  
use parquet::file::reader::SerializedFileReader;  
use parquet::record;  
use csv::WriterBuilder;  

#[derive(Debug, Parser)]  
#[command(version, about, long_about = None)]  
struct Args {  
    dir: String,  
    #[arg(default_value = "0")]  
    count: usize  
}  

fn get_files_in_dir(dir: &str) -> Option<Vec<PathBuf>>  
{  
    let dir = fs::read_dir(dir);  
    if dir.is_err() {  
        return None  
    };  
    let files = dir.unwrap()  
        .map(|res| res.map(|e| e.path()))  
        .collect::<Result<Vec<_>, _>>();  
    if files.is_err() {  
        return None  
    }  
    files.ok()  
}  

fn read_parquet_dir(entries: &Vec<String>) ->  impl Iterator<Item = record::Row> {  
    entries.iter()  
        .map(|p| SerializedFileReader::try_from(p.clone()).unwrap())  
        .flat_map(|r| r.into_iter())  
        .map(|r| r.unwrap())  
}  
                            
fn main() -> Result<(), io::Error> {  
    let args = Args::parse();  
    let entries = match get_files_in_dir(&args.dir)  
    {  
        Some(entries) => entries,  
        None => return Ok(())  
    };  


    let mut wtr = WriterBuilder::new().from_writer(io::stdout());  
    for (idx, row) in read_parquet_dir(&entries.iter().map(|p| p.display().to_string()).collect()).enumerate() {  
        let values: Vec<String> = row.get_column_iter().map(|(_column, value)| value.to_string()).collect();  
        if idx == 0 {  
            wtr.serialize(row.get_column_iter().map(|(column, _value)| column.to_string()).collect::<Vec<String>>())?;  
        }  
        wtr.serialize(values)?;  
        if args.count>0 && idx+1 == args.count {  
            break;  
        }  
    }  
    
    Ok(())  
}  
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] INeedMana@piefed.zip 2 points 6 hours ago

Oh wow! Thank you very much for such a deep dive

So try_from(&**p) is not a code smell/poor form in Rust?

[-] BB_C@programming.dev 4 points 5 hours ago

So try_from(&**p) is not a code smell/poor form in Rust?

No. It's how you (explicitly) go from ref to deref.

Here:

  • p is &PathBuf
  • *p is PathBuf
  • **p is Path (Deref)
  • And &**p is &Path.

Since what you started with is a reference to a non-Copy value, you can't do anything that would use/move *p or **p. Furthermore, Path is an unsized type (just like str and [T]), so you need to reference it (or Box it) in any case.

Another way to do this is:

let p: &Path = p.as_ref();

Some APIs use AsRef in signatures to allow passing references of different types directly (e.g. File::open()), but that doesn't apply here.

this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
11 points (100.0% liked)

Rust

7726 readers
84 users here now

Welcome to the Rust community! This is a place to discuss about the Rust programming language.

Wormhole

!performance@programming.dev

Credits

  • The icon is a modified version of the official rust logo (changing the colors to a gradient and black background)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS