Kinds

A ty::subst::Kind<'tcx> represents some entity in the type system: a type (Ty<'tcx>), lifetime (ty::Region<'tcx>) or constant (ty::Const<'tcx>). Kind is used to perform substitutions of generic parameters for concrete arguments, such as when calling a function with generic parameters explicitly with type arguments. Substitutions are represented using the Subst type as described below.

Subst

ty::subst::Subst<'tcx> is intuitively simply a slice of Kind<'tcx>s, acting as an ordered list of substitutions from generic parameters to concrete arguments (such as types, lifetimes and consts).

For example, given a HashMap<K, V> with two type parameters, K and V, an instantiation of the parameters, for example HashMap<i32, u32>, would be represented by the substitution &'tcx [tcx.types.i32, tcx.types.u32].

Subst provides various convenience methods to instantiant substitutions given item definitions, which should generally be used rather than explicitly constructing such substitution slices.

Kind

The actual Kind struct is optimised for space, storing the type, lifetime or const as an interned pointer containing a tag identifying its kind (in the lowest 2 bits). Unless you are working with the Subst implementation specifically, you should generally not have to deal with Kind and instead make use of the safe UnpackedKind abstraction.

UnpackedKind

As Kind itself is not type-safe, the UnpackedKind enum provides a more convenient and safe interface for dealing with kinds. An UnpackedKind can be converted to a raw Kind using Kind::from() (or simply .into() when the context is clear). As mentioned earlier, substition lists store raw Kinds, so before dealing with them, it is preferable to convert them to UnpackedKinds first. This is done by calling the .unpack() method.

// An example of unpacking and packing a kind.
fn deal_with_kind<'tcx>(kind: Kind<'tcx>) -> Kind<'tcx> {
    // Unpack a raw `Kind` to deal with it safely.
    let new_kind: UnpackedKind<'tcx> = match kind.unpack() {
        UnpackedKind::Type(ty) => { /* ... */ }
        UnpackedKind::Lifetime(lt) => { /* ... */ }
        UnpackedKind::Const(ct) => { /* ... */ }
    };
    // Pack the `UnpackedKind` to store it in a substitution list.
    new_kind.into()
}