Trait Debug

pub trait Debug: PointeeSized

? formatting.

Debug should format the output in a programmer-facing, debugging context.

Generally speaking, you should just derive a Debug implementation.

When used with the alternate format specifier #?, the output is pretty-printed.

For more information on formatters, see the module-level documentation.

This trait can be used with #[derive] if all fields implement Debug. When derived for structs, it will use the name of the struct, then {, then a comma-separated list of each field's name and Debug value, then }. For enums, it will use the name of the variant and, if applicable, (, then the Debug values of the fields, then ).

Stability

Derived Debug formats are not stable, and so may change with future Rust versions. Additionally, Debug implementations of types provided by the standard library (std, core, alloc, etc.) are not stable, and may also change with future Rust versions.

Examples

Deriving an implementation:

#[derive(Debug)]
struct Point {
    x: i32,
    y: i32,
}

let origin = Point { x: 0, y: 0 };

assert_eq!(
    format!("The origin is: {origin:?}"),
    "The origin is: Point { x: 0, y: 0 }",
);

Manually implementing:

use std::fmt;

struct Point {
    x: i32,
    y: i32,
}

impl fmt::Debug for Point {
    fn fmt(&self, f: &mut fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> fmt::Result {
        f.debug_struct("Point")
         .field("x", &self.x)
         .field("y", &self.y)
         .finish()
    }
}

let origin = Point { x: 0, y: 0 };

assert_eq!(
    format!("The origin is: {origin:?}"),
    "The origin is: Point { x: 0, y: 0 }",
);

There are a number of helper methods on the Formatter struct to help you with manual implementations, such as debug_struct.

Types that do not wish to use the standard suite of debug representations provided by the Formatter trait (debug_struct, debug_tuple, debug_list, debug_set, debug_map) can do something totally custom by manually writing an arbitrary representation to the Formatter.

# use std::fmt;
# struct Point {
#     x: i32,
#     y: i32,
# }
#
impl fmt::Debug for Point {
    fn fmt(&self, f: &mut fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> fmt::Result {
        write!(f, "Point [{} {}]", self.x, self.y)
    }
}

Debug implementations using either derive or the debug builder API on Formatter support pretty-printing using the alternate flag: {:#?}.

Pretty-printing with #?:

#[derive(Debug)]
struct Point {
    x: i32,
    y: i32,
}

let origin = Point { x: 0, y: 0 };

let expected = "The origin is: Point {
    x: 0,
    y: 0,
}";
assert_eq!(format!("The origin is: {origin:#?}"), expected);

Required Methods

fn fmt(&self, f: &mut Formatter<'_>) -> Result

Formats the value using the given formatter.

Errors

This function should return Err if, and only if, the provided Formatter returns Err. String formatting is considered an infallible operation; this function only returns a Result because writing to the underlying stream might fail and it must provide a way to propagate the fact that an error has occurred back up the stack.

Examples

use std::fmt;

struct Position {
    longitude: f32,
    latitude: f32,
}

impl fmt::Debug for Position {
    fn fmt(&self, f: &mut fmt::Formatter<'_>) -> fmt::Result {
        f.debug_tuple("")
         .field(&self.longitude)
         .field(&self.latitude)
         .finish()
    }
}

let position = Position { longitude: 1.987, latitude: 2.983 };
assert_eq!(format!("{position:?}"), "(1.987, 2.983)");

assert_eq!(format!("{position:#?}"), "(
    1.987,
    2.983,
)");

Implementors