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Confusing term ("non-pointer type"s) in docs for 'Deref'/'DerefMut' #72335

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JOE1994 opened this issue May 18, 2020 · 0 comments · Fixed by #72834
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Confusing term ("non-pointer type"s) in docs for 'Deref'/'DerefMut' #72335

JOE1994 opened this issue May 18, 2020 · 0 comments · Fixed by #72834
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A-docs Area: Documentation for any part of the project, including the compiler, standard library, and tools

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@JOE1994
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JOE1994 commented May 18, 2020

Hi 🦀 ,

I'm a bit confused with the term "non-pointer types" used in the docs for Deref/DerefMut.

  • From docs for Deref
If T implements Deref<Target = U>, and x is a value of type T, then:

    * In immutable contexts, *x on non-pointer types is equivalent to *Deref::deref(&x).
  • From docs for DerefMut
If T implements DerefMut<Target = U>, and x is a value of type T, then:

    * In mutable contexts, *x on non-pointer types is equivalent to *DerefMut::deref_mut(&mut x).

The docs describe behavior of *x on non-pointer types.
If I assume "smart pointer"s are "pointer"s (as the Rust reference does),
it seems quite awkward to discuss behavior of *x on non-pointer types in the docs,
since docs for Deref & DerefMut say that
"Deref/DerefMut should only be implemented for smart pointers".

If the term "non-pointer type" refers to smart pointers in this context,
would it be better to replace the term "non-pointer type" with either
just "smart pointer" or "non-primitive pointer type" ??

Thank you for reading this issue 🦀
@Elinvynia Elinvynia added the A-docs Area: Documentation for any part of the project, including the compiler, standard library, and tools label May 20, 2020
@JOE1994 JOE1994 mentioned this issue May 31, 2020
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Dylan-DPC-zz pushed a commit to Dylan-DPC-zz/rust that referenced this issue Jun 1, 2020
@Dylan-DPC
Rollup merge of rust-lang#72834 - JOE1994:correct_confusing_term, r=s…
16b4dc0 
…fackler

Rephrase term 'non-pointer type'

Hello 🐈 ,

If the reader assumes that 'pointer type's include 'smart pointer's,
the term 'non-pointer type' could mislead the reader to assume that
x should not be a smart pointer type. I tried to rephrase the term
'non-pointer type' to remove ambiguity in the doc comments.

closes rust-lang#72335

Thank you for reviewing this PR! 🦸‍♀️
@bors bors closed this as completed in 3048a41 Jun 1, 2020
@solc42 solc42 mentioned this issue Nov 13, 2022
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Rephrase term 'non-pointer type' JOE1994/rust
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@JOE1994 @Elinvynia