Working with collections of bytes

Published: 2023-11-06
Updated: 2024-01-12

Converting to String 🔗

Some types use byte arrays instead of strings and you may want to convert them to strings based on your use case. For example std::process::OutputOutput uses by Vec<u8> to store both stdout and stderr. Use the following to convert them to strings.

Note that if you only want to print them to stdout it isn’t required to convert them as also shown in the example from std

use std::process::Command;
use std::io::{self, Write};
let output = Command::new("/bin/cat")
                     .arg("file.txt")
                     .output()
                     .expect("failed to execute process");

println!("status: {}", output.status);
io::stdout().write_all(&output.stdout).unwrap();
io::stderr().write_all(&output.stderr).unwrap();

assert!(output.status.success());

let data = &output.stdout;
match std::str::from_utf8(data) {
    Ok(s) => {
        println!("{s}");
    }
    Err(e) => {
        println!("{e:?} - {data:?}");
    }
}