Could we have an API with `output: &mut [MaybeUninit<u8>]`?

[michaelbeaumont]

Would there be any blockers to providing an API accepting &mut [MaybeUninit<u8>] and using MaybeUninit::write internally? The advantage being enabling APIs like BytesMut::spare_capacity_mut to avoid zeroing out allocated bytes to get a &mut [u8]. Is there an alternative?

[BurntSushi]

I agree that a &mut [MaybeUninit<u8>] makes sense.

I don't really work on this crate much any more, so I don't know how likely it is to happen. I'd be open to reviewing a PR... eventually. But it will likely take some time because this will involve unsafe and will therefore require extra close scrutiny on my part.

[michaelbeaumont]

What do you think about bringing in a dependency for abstracting over &mut [u8] and &mut [MaybeUninit<u8>]? Specifically in the bytes crate, UninitSlice. Or rather just implement our own slimmed down version of this that does just what we need?

[BurntSushi]

That's nowhere near worth the dependency.