RFC 1640: duration-checked-sub

libs (time)

• Feature Name: duration_checked
• Start Date: 2016-06-04
• RFC PR: rust-lang/rfcs#1640
• Rust Issue: rust-lang/rust#35774

Summary

This RFC adds the checked_* methods already known from primitives like usize to Duration.

Motivation

Generally this helps when subtracting Durations which can be the case quite often.

One abstract example would be executing a specific piece of code repeatedly after a constant amount of time.

Specific examples would be a network service or a rendering process emitting a constant amount of frames per second.

Example code would be as follows:

// This function is called repeatedly
fn render() {
    // 10ms delay results in 100 frames per second
    let wait_time = Duration::from_millis(10);

    // `Instant` for elapsed time
    let start = Instant::now();

    // execute code here
    render_and_output_frame();

    // there are no negative `Duration`s so this does nothing if the elapsed
    // time is longer than the defined `wait_time`
    start.elapsed().checked_sub(wait_time).and_then(std::thread::sleep);
}

Of course it is also suitable to not introduce panic!()s when adding Durations.

Detailed design

The detailed design would be exactly as the current sub() method, just returning an Option<Duration> and passing possible None values from the underlying primitive types:

impl Duration {
    fn checked_sub(self, rhs: Duration) -> Option<Duration> {
        if let Some(mut secs) = self.secs.checked_sub(rhs.secs) {
            let nanos = if self.nanos >= rhs.nanos {
                self.nanos - rhs.nanos
            } else {
                if let Some(secs) = secs.checked_sub(1) {
                    self.nanos + NANOS_PER_SEC - rhs.nanos
                }
                else {
                    return None;
                }
            };
            debug_assert!(nanos < NANOS_PER_SEC);
            Some(Duration { secs: secs, nanos: nanos })
        }
        else {
            None
        }
    }
}

The same accounts for all other added methods, namely:

• checked_add()
• checked_sub()
• checked_mul()
• checked_div()

Drawbacks

None.

Alternatives

The alternatives are simply not doing this and forcing the programmer to code the check on their behalf. This is not what you want.

Unresolved questions

None.