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Winston Puckett
Winston Puckett Subscriber

Posted on • Updated on

Understanding Rust Imports

I have to reference this all the time :D

Import example.rs into main.rs (same folder)

File Structure:
\src
  -example.rs
  -main.rs
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example.rs:

// example.rs
pub fn my_function() {
    println!("You called my_function!");
}
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main.rs:

// main.rs
mod example;

fn main() {
    example::my_function();
}
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Import example.rs into main.rs (example.rs in examples folder)

File Structure:
\src
  -main.rs
  \examples
    -example.rs
    -mod.rs
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examples/example.rs:

// examples/example.rs
pub fn my_function() {
    println!("You called my_function!");
}
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examples/mod.rs:

// examples/mod.rs
pub mod example;
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main.rs:

// main.rs
mod examples;

fn main() {
    examples::example::my_function();
}
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Import example1.rs into example2.rs (then call example2 from main.rs)

File Structure:
\src
  -example1.rs
  -example2.rs
  -main.rs
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example1.rs:

// example.rs
pub fn my_function() {
    println!("You called my_function!");
}
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example2.rs:

use crate::example1;

pub fn call_example_function() {
    example1::my_function();
}
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main.rs

// it's crazy. You have to reexport the example1 from main.rs so that example2 can see this.
pub mod example1;
mod example2;

fn main() {
    example2::call_example_function();
}
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Conclusion

It's really complicated. I'm not gonna try to memorize this.

Top comments (2)

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msfjarvis profile image
Harsh Shandilya

It's indeed complicated but a good way to learn is to remember that as a rule of thumb, all your modules must be exported by main.rs or lib.rs (depending on the type of crate). In your final example, you don't need to do pub use, pub(crate) use works better to export the module to the entire crate without making it public API (if you're building a library project).

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winstonpuckett profile image
Winston Puckett

Ooh. That's good to know, thank you :)