Strings
There are two types of strings in Rust: String and &str.
A String is stored as a vector of bytes (Vec<u8>), but guaranteed to
always be a valid UTF-8 sequence. String is heap allocated, growable and not
null terminated.
&str is a slice (&[u8]) that always points to a valid UTF-8 sequence, and
can be used to view into a String, just like &[T] is a view into Vec<T>.
More str/String methods can be found under the
std::str and
std::string
modules
Literals and escapes
There are multiple ways to write string literals with special characters in them.
All result in a similar &str so it's best to use the form that is the most
convenient to write. Similarly there are multiple ways to write byte string literals,
which all result in &[u8; N].
Generally special characters are escaped with a backslash character: \.
This way you can add any character to your string, even unprintable ones
and ones that you don't know how to type. If you want a literal backslash,
escape it with another one: \\
String or character literal delimiters occurring within a literal must be escaped: "\"", '\''.
Sometimes there are just too many characters that need to be escaped or it's just much more convenient to write a string out as-is. This is where raw string literals come into play.
Want a string that's not UTF-8? (Remember, str and String must be valid UTF-8).
Or maybe you want an array of bytes that's mostly text? Byte strings to the rescue!
For conversions between character encodings check out the encoding crate.
A more detailed listing of the ways to write string literals and escape characters is given in the 'Tokens' chapter of the Rust Reference.