Union types
A union type is a nominal, heterogeneous C-like union, denoted by the name of
a union
item.
Unions have no notion of an "active field". Instead, every union access
transmutes parts of the content of the union to the type of the accessed field.
Since transmutes can cause unexpected or undefined behaviour, unsafe
is
required to read from a union field. Union field types are also restricted to a
subset of types which ensures that they never need dropping. See the item
documentation for further details.
The memory layout of a union
is undefined by default (in particular, fields do
not have to be at offset 0), but the #[repr(...)]
attribute can be used to
fix a layout.