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method-lookup.md improvements (rust-lang#1296)
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mattheww authored Apr 11, 2022
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Expand Up @@ -79,33 +79,34 @@ behavior should be reconsidered in light of where clauses.
TODO: Is this FIXME still accurate?

**Extension candidates** are derived from imported traits. If I have
the trait `ToString` imported, and I call `to_string()` on a value of
type `T`, then we will go off to find out whether there is an impl of
`ToString` for `T`. These kinds of method calls are called "extension
methods". They can be defined in any crate, not only the one that
defined `T`. Furthermore, you must import the trait to call such a
method.
the trait `ToString` imported, and I call `to_string()` as a method,
then we will list the `to_string()` definition in each impl of
`ToString` as a candidate. These kinds of method calls are called
"extension methods".

So, let's continue our example. Imagine that we were calling a method
`foo` with the receiver `Rc<Box<[T; 3]>>` and there is a trait `Foo`
that defines it with `&self` for the type `Rc<U>` as well as a method
on the type `Box` that defines `Foo` but with `&mut self`. Then we
on the type `Box` that defines `foo` but with `&mut self`. Then we
might have two candidates:

- `&Rc<Box<[T; 3]>>` from the impl of `Foo` for `Rc<U>` where `U=Box<[T; 3]>`
- `&mut Box<[T; 3]>>` from the inherent impl on `Box<U>` where `U=[T; 3]`
- `&Rc<U>` as an extension candidate
- `&mut Box<U>` as an inherent candidate

### Candidate search

Finally, to actually pick the method, we will search down the steps,
trying to match the receiver type against the candidate types. At
each step, we also consider an auto-ref and auto-mut-ref to see whether
that makes any of the candidates match. We pick the first step where
we find a match.
that makes any of the candidates match. For each resulting receiver
type, we consider inherent candidates before extension candidates.
If there are multiple matching candidates in a group, we report an
error, except that multiple impls of the same trait are treated as a
single match. Otherwise we pick the first match we find.

In the case of our example, the first step is `Rc<Box<[T; 3]>>`,
which does not itself match any candidate. But when we autoref it, we
get the type `&Rc<Box<[T; 3]>>` which does match. We would then
get the type `&Rc<Box<[T; 3]>>` which matches `&Rc<U>`. We would then
recursively consider all where-clauses that appear on the impl: if
those match (or we cannot rule out that they do), then this is the
method we would pick. Otherwise, we would continue down the series of
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