Cannot borrow immutable borrowed content as mutable

Question

I\'m trying to develop a message routing app. I\'ve read the official Rust docs and some articles and thought that I got how pointers, owning, and borrowing stuff works but

Answer 1

Here is an MCVE of your problem:

use std::collections::HashMap;

struct Components {
    data: HashMap<u8, Vec<u8>>,
}

impl Components {
    fn add_or_update(&mut self, component: u8) {
        let mut q = self.data.get(&component);
        let mut queue = q.as_mut().unwrap();
        queue.remove(0);
    }
}

Before NLL

error[E0596]: cannot borrow immutable borrowed content `**queue` as mutable
  --> src/lib.rs:11:9
   |
11 |         queue.remove(0);
   |         ^^^^^ cannot borrow as mutable

After NLL

error[E0596]: cannot borrow `**queue` as mutable, as it is behind a `&` reference
  --> src/lib.rs:11:9
   |
11 |         queue.remove(0);
   |         ^^^^^ cannot borrow as mutable

Many times, when something seems surprising like this, it's useful to print out the types involved. Let's print out the type of queue:

let mut queue: () = q.as_mut().unwrap();

error[E0308]: mismatched types
  --> src/lib.rs:10:29
   |
10 |         let mut queue: () = q.as_mut().unwrap();
   |                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ expected (), found mutable reference
   |
   = note: expected type `()`
              found type `&mut &std::vec::Vec<u8>`

We have a mutable reference to an immutable reference to a Vec<u8>. Because we have an immutable reference to the Vec, we cannot modify it! Changing self.data.get to self.data.get_mut changes the type to &mut &mut collections::vec::Vec<u8> and the code compiles.

---

If you want to implement the concept of "insert or update", you should check into the entry API, which is more efficient and concise.

Beyond that, Rust uses snake_case for method naming, not camelCase.