Rust: When rustc Beats Cargo for quick trial code

Recently, I needed to test try some functionality (of getting user’s home directory) ¹

Setting up a throw away project via cargo new is certainly possible but seemed overkill.

A little bit of googling, presented me with an option of using just the rust compiler, without having to setup a project.

Just create a rust source file, say test.rs and compile it via the Rust compiler as : rustc ./test.rs

(If there are no errors) It creates a binary called test 🎉 ²

I know what you are thinking.

Rust playground!

Yes, So far in my rust learning journey, that is what I have been using and it works for most cases. But,

• It requires Internet (rustc works locally)
• Sometimes you need to test something locally, like getting files from root directory. You may not have access to root folder in rust playground

While I was gloating about my epiphany, I remembered I had installed irust ³

It is ipython like interactive REPL for rust.

At first, I was skeptical how well it will work.

But it works well.

At least for this particular case anyway.

and it is also local (No internet required!)

Here is the output of irust session :

In: use std::env;
In: match env::home_dir() {
..: Some(path) => println!("Your home directory, probably: {}", path.displat()),
..: None => println!("Impossible to get your home dir"),
..: }
error[E0599]: no method named `displat` found for struct `PathBuf` in the current scope
 --> src/main.rs:6:66
  |
6 | Some(path) => println!("Your home directory, probably: {}", path.displat()),
  |                                                                  ^^^^^^^
  |
help: there is a method `display` with a similar name
  |
6 | Some(path) => println!("Your home directory, probably: {}", path.display()),
  |                                                                  ~~~~~~~

In: match env::home_dir() {
..: Some(path) => println!("Your home directory, probably: {}", path.display()),
..: None => println!("Impossible to get your home dir"),
..: }
Out: Your home directory, probably: /home/mandar
()

In: