How can I pattern match against an Option<String>?

It's a known limitation of Rust's patterns.

Method calls (including internal methods for operators like ==) automatically call .deref() as needed, so String gets automagically turned into &str for comparisons with literals.

On the other hand, the patterns are quite literal in their comparisons, and find that String and &str are different.

There are two solutions:

1. Change Option<String> to Option<&str> before matching on it: Some(a).as_ref().map(String::as_str). The as_ref() makes Option<&String> (preventing move), and as_str() then unambiguously references it as a &str.

2. Use match guard: match Some(a) { Some(ref s) if s == "hello" => … }. Some(ref s) matches any String, and captures it as s: &String, which you can then compare in the if guard which does the usual flexible coercions to make it work.

See also:

• Converting from Option<String> to Option<&str>

Look at this.

You cannot match on std::String, as you've found, only on &str. Nested pattern matches work, so if you can match on &str, you can match on Option<&str>, but still not on Option<String>.

In the working example, you turned the std::String into a &str by doing &a[..]. If you want to match on a Option<String>, you have to do the same thing.

One way is to use nested matches:

match a {
    Some(ref s) => match &s[..] {
        "hello" => /* ... */,
        _ => /* ... */,
    },
    _ => /* ... */,
}

But then you have to duplicate the "otherwise" code if it's the same, and it's generally not as nice.

Instead, you can turn the Option<String> into an Option<&str> and match on this, using the map function. However, map consumes the value it is called on, moving it into the mapping function. This is a problem because you want to reference the string, and you can't do that if you have moved it into the mapping function. You first need to turn the Option<String> into a Option<&String> and map on that.

Thus you end up with a.as_ref().map(|s| /* s is type &String */ &s[..]). You can then match on that.

match os.as_ref().map(|s| &s[..]) {
    Some("hello") => println!("It's 'hello'"),
    // Leave out this branch if you want to treat other strings and None the same.
    Some(_) => println!("It's some other string"),
    _ => println!("It's nothing"),
}

As of Rust 1.40, you can now use as_deref instead of the top answers:

match args.nth(1).as_deref() {
    Some("help") => {}
    Some(s) => {}
    None => {}
}

I found this because it is one of the clippy lints.