vinnie357 Rust Anti-Patterns
Catalog of Rust anti-patterns and clippy anti-idioms for reviewers and implementers actively hunting code to fix or remove. Complements /rust:troubleshooting (which teaches the idiomatic GOOD patterns) by naming the BAD patterns explicitly, with detection hints.
Sources
Rust Design Patterns book (anti-patterns, idioms) and the Clippy lint index — full attribution per entry in references/anti-patterns.md, dated URLs in sources.md.
Example
// BAD: clippy::ptr_arg — forces callers to hold an owned Vec
fn process(data: &Vec<i32>) { /* ... */ }
// GOOD: accepts a Vec, an array, or a slice via deref coercion
fn process(data: &[i32]) { /* ... */ }
The full catalog (9 entries) is in references/anti-patterns.md.
Usage Guidelines
- Scan for the pattern — check the diff or module against
references/anti-patterns.md - Confirm it's not deliberate — a
restraint:comment or documented tradeoff can justify what looks like an anti-pattern; anti-patterns are defaults to avoid, not absolute bans - Fix at the root — apply the GOOD replacement, don't just silence the lint
- Cite the source — when flagging in review, reference the anti-pattern name so the author can look it up
Anti-Fabrication
Every entry in references/anti-patterns.md cites its source URL. Do not assert a clippy lint name, its default-enabled status, or a "this catches N% of cases" claim without verifying against the linked clippy documentation — see /core:anti-fabrication.