Lifetime-based iterator

[vigna]

We would love to use StreamingIterator, but we are in a situation in which we need a lifetime on the item. We are implementing our own version similarly to this:

pub trait StreamingIterator {
    type Item<'b>
    where
        Self: 'b;

    fn get(&self) -> Option<Self::Item<'_>>;
}

That is, we return actually the item, rather than a reference to the item, and the item has a lifetime that we can use to return references inside the item.

It there any way StreamingIterator can be adapted to this case?

[cuviper]

It would definitely be a breaking change to switch to GATs, and I think that would also come with some compiler limitations that don't affect the current &Item style.

There are a few other crates that do this, often calling it "lending iterator" now to distinguish from async streams.
https://crates.io/search?q=lending+iterator

[vigna]

Thank you, we will look into it. Great create, in any case!