Futures

Future is a trait, implemented by objects that represent an operation that may not be complete yet. A future can be polled, and poll returns a Poll.

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use std::pin::Pin;
use std::task::Context;

pub trait Future {
    type Output;
    fn poll(self: Pin<&mut Self>, cx: &mut Context<'_>) -> Poll<Self::Output>;
}

pub enum Poll<T> {
    Ready(T),
    Pending,
}
}

An async function returns an impl Future. It's also possible (but uncommon) to implement Future for your own types. For example, the JoinHandle returned from tokio::spawn implements Future to allow joining to it.

The .await keyword, applied to a Future, causes the current async function to pause until that Future is ready, and then evaluates to its output.