Stabilization report

This proposes the stabilization of let_chains (tracking issue, RFC 2497) in the 2024 edition of Rust.

What is being stabilized

The ability to &&-chain let statements inside if and while is being stabilized, allowing intermixture with boolean expressions. The patterns inside the let sub-expressions can be irrefutable or refutable.

struct FnCall<'a> {
    fn_name: &'a str,
    args: Vec<i32>,
}

fn is_legal_ident(s: &str) -> bool {
    s.chars()
        .all(|c| ('a'..='z').contains(&c) || ('A'..='Z').contains(&c))
}

impl<'a> FnCall<'a> {
    fn parse(s: &'a str) -> Option<Self> {
        if let Some((fn_name, after_name)) = s.split_once("(")
            && !fn_name.is_empty()
            && is_legal_ident(fn_name)
            && let Some((args_str, "")) = after_name.rsplit_once(")")
        {
            let args = args_str
                .split(',')
                .map(|arg| arg.parse())
                .collect::<Result<Vec<_>, _>>();
            args.ok().map(|args| FnCall { fn_name, args })
        } else {
            None
        }
    }
    fn exec(&self) -> Option<i32> {
        let iter = self.args.iter().copied();
        match self.fn_name {
            "sum" => Some(iter.sum()),
            "max" => iter.max(),
            "min" => iter.min(),
            _ => None,
        }
    }
}

fn main() {
    println!("{:?}", FnCall::parse("sum(1,2,3)").unwrap().exec());
    println!("{:?}", FnCall::parse("max(4,5)").unwrap().exec());
}

The feature will only be stabilized for the 2024 edition and future editions. Users of past editions will get an error with a hint to update the edition.

closes #53667

Why 2024 edition?

Rust generally tries to ship new features to all editions. So even the oldest editions receive the newest features. However, sometimes a feature requires a breaking change so much that offering the feature without the breaking change makes no sense. This occurs rarely, but has happened in the 2018 edition already with async and await syntax. It required an edition boundary in order for async/await to become keywords, and the entire feature foots on those keywords.

In the instance of let chains, the issue is the drop order of if let chains. If we want if let chains to be compatible with if let, drop order makes it hard for us to generate correct MIR. It would be strange to have different behaviour for if let ... {} and if true && let ... {}. So it's better to stay consistent with if let.

In edition 2024, drop order changes have been introduced to make if let temporaries be lived more shortly. These changes also affected if let chains. These changes make sense even if you don't take the if let chains MIR generation problem into account. But if we want to use them as the solution to the MIR generation problem, we need to restrict let chains to edition 2024 and beyond: for let chains, it's not just a change towards more sensible behaviour, but one required for correct function.

Introduction considerations

As edition 2024 is very new, this stabilization PR only makes it possible to use let chains on 2024 without that feature gate, it doesn't mark that feature gate as stable/removed. I would propose to continue offering the let_chains feature (behind a feature gate) for a limited time (maybe 3 months after stabilization?) on older editions to allow nightly users to adopt edition 2024 at their own pace. After that, the feature gate shall be marked as stabilized, not removed, and replaced by an error on editions 2021 and below.

Implementation history

• History from before March 14, 2022 can be found in the original stabilization PR that was reverted.
• Stabilize let_chains in Rust 1.64 #94927
• Extend the irrefutable_let_patterns lint to let chains #94951
• Ensure that let_else does not interact with let_chains #94974
• [let_chains] Forbid let inside parentheses #95008
• [rustc_parse] Forbid lets in certain places #97295
• Fix last let_chains blocker #98633
• Remove let-chain close brace check. #99731
• Fix unwind drop glue for if-then scopes #102394
• Add tests for the drop behavior of some control flow constructs #100526
• Revert let_chains stabilization #100538
• Drop temporaries created in a condition, even if it's a let chain #102998
• Detect incorrect chaining of if and if let conditions and recover #103405
• Remove drop order twist of && and || and make them associative #103293
• Rescope temp lifetime in if-let into IfElse with migration lint #107251
• docs(style): add let-chain style rules #110568
• Improve invalid let expression handling #115677
• Suggest removing ; for ; within let-chains #117743
• Catch stray { in let-chains #117770
• Suggest let or == on typo'd let-chain #118191
• Fix scoping for let chains in match guards #119554
• Don't lint irrefutable_let_patterns on leading patterns if else if let-chains #129394
• Additional tests to ensure let is rejected during parsing #132828
• Add let_chains references reference#1179
• Revert let chains reference docs reference#1251
• Support let-chains rustfmt#5910

Adoption history

In the compiler

• History before March 14, 2022 can be found in the original stabilization PR.
• fix confusing let chain indentation in rustc_resolve #115983
• Simplify some mir passes by using let chains #116549
• Format all the let-chains in compiler crates #116688

Outside of the compiler

• Replace if_chain with let chains rust-clippy#11750
• rspack
• risingwave
• dylint
• convex-backend
• tikv
• Daft
• greptimedb

Tests

Possible future work

• There is proposals to allow if let Pat(bindings) = expr {} to be written as if expr is Pat(bindings) {} (RFC 3573). if let chains are a natural extension of the already existing if let syntax, and I'd argue orthogonal towards is syntax.
  • Consensus check: let-chains and is are not mutually exclusive lang-team#297
• One could have similar chaining inside let ... else statements. There is no proposed RFC for this however, nor is it implemented on nightly.
• Match guards have the if keyword as well, but on stable Rust, they don't support let. The functionality is available via an unstable feature (if_let_guard tracking issue). Stabilization of let chains affects this feature in so far as match guards containing let chains now only need the if_let_guard feature gate be present instead of also the let_chains feature (NOTE: this PR doesn't implement this simplification, it's left for future work).

Open questions / blockers

• bad recovery if you don't put a let (I don't think this is a blocker): #117977
• An instance where a temporary lives shorter than with nested ifs, breaking compilation: #103476. Personally I don't think this is a blocker either, as it's an edge case. Edit: turns out to not reproduce in edition 2025 any more, due to let rescoping. regression test added in Let chains tests #133093
• One should probably extend the tests for move-guard-if-let-chain.rs and conflicting_bindings.rs to have chains with multiple let's: done in 133093
• Parsing rejection tests: addressed by Additional tests to ensure let is rejected during parsing #132828
• Style: style guide: add let-chain rules #139456
• Non-terminals, e.g. expr, have diverged between parser and macro matcher #86730 explicitly mentions let_else. I think we can live with let pat = expr not evaluating as expr for macro_rules macros, especially given that let pat = expr is not a legal expression anywhere except inside if and while.
• Documentation in the reference: Document let_chains again reference#1740
• Add chapter to the Rust 2024 edition guide: Document if/while let chains edition-guide#337
• Resolve open questions on desired drop order.