pub struct GuestPtr<'a, T: ?Sized + Pointee> { /* private fields */ }
Expand description

A guest pointer into host memory.

This type represents a pointer from the guest that points into host memory. Internally a GuestPtr contains a handle to its original GuestMemory as well as the offset into the memory that the pointer is pointing at.

Presence of a GuestPtr does not imply any form of validity. Pointers can be out-of-bounds, misaligned, etc. It is safe to construct a GuestPtr with any offset at any time. Consider a GuestPtr<T> roughly equivalent to *mut T, although there are a few more safety guarantees around this type.

Slices and Strings

Note that the type parameter does not need to implement the Sized trait, so you can implement types such as this:

  • GuestPtr<'_, str> - a pointer to a guest string. Has the methods GuestPtr::as_str_mut, which gives a dynamically borrow-checked GuestStrMut<'_>, which DerefMuts to a &mut str, and GuestPtr::as_str, which is the shareable version of same.
  • GuestPtr<'_, [T]> - a pointer to a guest array. Has methods GuestPtr::as_slice_mut, which gives a dynamically borrow-checked GuestSliceMut<'_, T>, which DerefMuts to a &mut [T] and GuestPtr::as_slice, which is the shareable version of same.

Unsized types such as this may have extra methods and won’t have methods like GuestPtr::read or GuestPtr::write.

Type parameter and pointee

The T type parameter is largely intended for more static safety in Rust as well as having a better handle on what we’re pointing to. A GuestPtr<T>, however, does not necessarily literally imply a guest pointer pointing to type T. Instead the GuestType trait is a layer of abstraction where GuestPtr<T> may actually be a pointer to U in guest memory, but you can construct a T from a U.

For example GuestPtr<GuestPtr<T>> is a valid type, but this is actually more equivalent to GuestPtr<u32> because guest pointers are always 32-bits. That being said you can create a GuestPtr<T> from a u32.

Additionally GuestPtr<MyEnum> will actually delegate, typically, to and implementation which loads the underlying data as GuestPtr<u8> (or similar) and then the bytes loaded are validated to fit within the definition of MyEnum before MyEnum is returned.

For more information see the GuestPtr::read and GuestPtr::write methods. In general though be extremely careful about writing unsafe code when working with a GuestPtr if you’re not using one of the already-attached helper methods.

Implementations

Creates a new GuestPtr from the given mem and pointer values.

Note that for sized types like u32, GuestPtr<T>, etc, the pointer value is a u32 offset into guest memory. For slices and strings, pointer is a (u32, u32) offset/length pair.

Returns the offset of this pointer in guest memory.

Note that for sized types this returns a u32, but for slices and strings it returns a (u32, u32) pointer/length pair.

Returns the guest memory that this pointer is coming from.

Casts this GuestPtr type to a different type.

This is a safe method which is useful for simply reinterpreting the type parameter on this GuestPtr. Note that this is a safe method, where again there’s no guarantees about alignment, validity, in-bounds-ness, etc of the returned pointer.

Safely read a value from this pointer.

This is a fun method, and is one of the lynchpins of this implementation. The highlight here is that this is a safe operation, not an unsafe one like *mut T. This works for a few reasons:

  • The unsafe contract of the GuestMemory trait means that there’s always at least some backing memory for this GuestPtr<T>.

  • This does not use Rust-intrinsics to read the type T, but rather it delegates to T’s implementation of GuestType to actually read the underlying data. This again is a safe method, so any unsafety, if any, must be internally documented.

  • Eventually what typically happens it that this bottoms out in the read implementations for primitives types (like i32) which can safely be read at any time, and then it’s up to the runtime to determine what to do with the bytes it read in a safe manner.

Naturally lots of things can still go wrong, such as out-of-bounds checks, alignment checks, validity checks (e.g. for enums), etc. All of these check failures, however, are returned as a GuestError in the Result here, and Ok is only returned if all the checks passed.

Safely write a value to this pointer.

This method, like GuestPtr::read, is pretty crucial for the safe operation of this crate. All the same reasons apply though for why this method is safe, even eventually bottoming out in primitives like writing an i32 which is safe to write bit patterns into memory at any time due to the guarantees of GuestMemory.

Like read, write can fail due to any manner of pointer checks, but any failure is returned as a GuestError.

Performs pointer arithmetic on this pointer, moving the pointer forward amt slots.

This will either return the resulting pointer or Err if the pointer arithmetic calculation would overflow around the end of the address space.

Returns a GuestPtr for an array of Ts using this pointer as the base.

For slices, specifically returns the relative pointer to the base of the array.

This is similar to <[T]>::as_ptr()

For slices, returns the length of the slice, in elements.

Returns an iterator over interior pointers.

Each item is a Result indicating whether it overflowed past the end of the address space or not.

Attempts to create a [GuestSlice<'_, T>] from this pointer, performing bounds checks and type validation. The GuestSlice is a smart pointer that can be used as a &[T] via the Deref trait. The region of memory backing the slice will be marked as shareably borrowed by the GuestMemory until the GuestSlice is dropped. Multiple shareable borrows of the same memory are permitted, but only one mutable borrow.

This function will return a GuestSlice into host memory if all checks succeed (valid utf-8, valid pointers, memory is not borrowed, etc). If any checks fail then GuestError will be returned.

Attempts to create a [GuestSliceMut<'_, T>] from this pointer, performing bounds checks and type validation. The GuestSliceMut is a smart pointer that can be used as a &[T] or a &mut [T] via the Deref and DerefMut traits. The region of memory backing the slice will be marked as borrowed by the GuestMemory until the GuestSlice is dropped.

This function will return a GuestSliceMut into host memory if all checks succeed (valid utf-8, valid pointers, memory is not borrowed, etc). If any checks fail then GuestError will be returned.

Copies the data pointed to by slice into this guest region.

This method is a safe method to copy data from the host to the guest. This requires that self and slice have the same length. The pointee type T requires the GuestTypeTransparent trait which is an assertion that the representation on the host and on the guest is the same.

Errors

Returns an error if this guest pointer is out of bounds or if the length of this guest pointer is not equal to the length of the slice provided.

Returns a GuestPtr pointing to the base of the array for the interior type T.

For strings, returns the relative pointer to the base of the string allocation.

Returns the length, in bytes, of the string.

Returns a raw pointer for the underlying slice of bytes that this pointer points to.

Returns a pointer for the underlying slice of bytes that this pointer points to.

Attempts to create a [GuestStr<'_>] from this pointer, performing bounds checks and utf-8 checks. The resulting GuestStr can be used as a &str via the Deref trait. The region of memory backing the str will be marked as shareably borrowed by the GuestMemory until the GuestStr is dropped.

This function will return GuestStr into host memory if all checks succeed (valid utf-8, valid pointers, etc). If any checks fail then GuestError will be returned.

Attempts to create a [GuestStrMut<'_>] from this pointer, performing bounds checks and utf-8 checks. The resulting GuestStrMut can be used as a &str or &mut str via the Deref and DerefMut traits. The region of memory backing the str will be marked as borrowed by the GuestMemory until the GuestStrMut is dropped.

This function will return GuestStrMut into host memory if all checks succeed (valid utf-8, valid pointers, etc). If any checks fail then GuestError will be returned.

Returns a pointer to the string represented by a [u8] without validating whether each u8 is a utf-8 codepoint.

Trait Implementations

Returns a copy of the value. Read more

Performs copy-assignment from source. Read more

Formats the value using the given formatter. Read more

Returns the size, in bytes, of this type in the guest memory.

Returns the required alignment of this type, in bytes, for both guest and host memory. Read more

Reads this value from the provided ptr. Read more

Writes a value to ptr after verifying that ptr is indeed valid to store val. Read more

Returns the size, in bytes, of this type in the guest memory.

Returns the required alignment of this type, in bytes, for both guest and host memory. Read more

Reads this value from the provided ptr. Read more

Writes a value to ptr after verifying that ptr is indeed valid to store val. Read more

Auto Trait Implementations

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Drops the object pointed to by the given pointer. Read more

Should always be Self

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Creates owned data from borrowed data, usually by cloning. Read more

🔬 This is a nightly-only experimental API. (toowned_clone_into)

Uses borrowed data to replace owned data, usually by cloning. Read more

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