#1990·rustlings

options2: unclear what to do and why

Author: Fxlr8Created Jun 9, 2024Updated Jul 23, 2025
LabelsC-enhancementA-exercisesP-low

Hello Rustlings Team,

First of all thank you for this project. It was really fun solving it so far. I got really stuck and scratching my head at this one and I decided to ask you for an improvement.

rust
    fn simple_option() {
        let target = "rustlings";
        let optional_target = Some(target);

        // TODO: Make this an if let statement whose value is "Some" type
        word = optional_target {
            assert_eq!(word, target);
        }
    }

Looks like this excercise is trying to show how to use Option<T> type in Rust. Currently, the exercise seems somewhat forced and does not effectively demonstrate the real-world use cases of the Option type.

We start with a "rustlings" string literal and wrap it in optional_target. Then the comment asks us to Make this an if let statement whose value is "Some" type (which is a riddle by itself) providing us with some convoluted assertion. I am just learning Rust and have never seen this type before. If that task had some real-world scenario showing us why Option type is useful (for example safe parsing of data) that would really help.