[Georgelemental]

Using `clone` etc when it's easier is actually common advice, it's perfectly OK to not have borrowing everywhere if you don't need it. My usual starting point / default / rule of thumb is to take references as parameters and return owned values (for example, take `&str` as an argument, return an owned `String`).

[inferiorhuman]

IMO stringy data is a good example of where you should think about what you're returning in part because common APIs (e.g. regex) will take a more nuanced approach.

If you're creating a new string, then sure return String. But if you have a path where you could just return the original input, consider returning a Cow<str>.

[chrismorgan]

burntsushi actually regrets making regex replace return a Cow<str>: https://github.com/rust-lang/regex/issues/676#issuecomment-6.... I’m glad it does, and wish it took an impl Into<Cow<str>> there, for the reasons discussed in the issue, but burntsushi has a lot more experience of the practical outcomes of this. Just something more to think about.

[inferiorhuman]

So from reading those comments, I'd come to the opposite conclusion: Cow<str> is absolutely the right choice and perhaps String should really have been Cow<str>.

Insofar as taking an impl into, burntsushi linked to a rust playground demonstrating where that approach falls down. In general (heh) taking arguments , especially options or stringy ones, that are generalized over an into impl is one of those things that seems real nice at first but gets real unpleasant pretty quick IMO.

[burntsushi]

In my defense, I said I occasionally regret the choice. But in rebuttal, I certainly do not have your confidence that returning Cow<str> is the right choice. Basically, when it comes down to it, I'm not 100% convinced that it pulls its weight. But like I said in the issue, it's decently motivated.

I don't think String could be a Cow<str>. Remember, Cow<str> is actually a Cow<'a, str>, and if you want to borrow a &str from a Cow, the lifetime of that &str is not 'a, but rather, attached to the Cow itself. (This is necessary because the Cow<str> may contain an owned String.) This in turn would effectively kill string slicing.

In order for something like Cow<str> to be the default, you need more infrastructure. Maybe something like hipstr[1]. It is a nice abstraction, but not one that would be appropriate for std.

[1]: https://docs.rs/hipstr/latest/hipstr/

[chrismorgan]

(Sorry I missed the word “occasionally” there!)