toolchest - Essential Utility Collection for Rust

Your essential collection of Rust utilities for strings, math, time, types, collections, and more.

Why toolchest?

Every craftsperson needs a well-organized toolchest. This crate provides a focused set of utilities that cover common tasks across domains without pulling in heavy dependencies.

Quick Start

use toolchest::prelude::*;
use std::time::Duration;

// String manipulation
let snake = strings::to_snake_case("HelloWorld");  // "hello_world"

// Math utilities
let rounded = math::round(3.14159, 2);  // 3.14
let clamped = math::clamp(15, 0, 10);   // 10

// Deep operations (example)
// let merged = deep::merge(&default_config, &user_config);

// Function combinators (example)
// let search = functions::debounce(expensive_search, Duration::from_millis(300));

// Type utilities
let is_empty = types::is_empty::<Vec<i32>>(&vec![]);

Installation

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
toolchest = "0.1.0"

MSRV: 1.81.0

Optional features:

• json – serde/serde_json helpers
• fs – filesystem utilities (walkdir)

Modules at a Glance

For full API details, see the docs: https://docs.rs/toolchest

Strings

• case conversion/manipulation/escape/words/slug/validators and more

Math

• rounding/stats/ranges/numeric helpers/primes/vectors/distances

Deep

• clone/merge/equal/path and JSON path (feature: json)

Functions

• debounce/throttle/memoize/retry/backoff/compose/rate-limiters/timeout

Types

• checking/conversions/non-empty and helpers

Collections

• chunk/uniq/set ops/grouping/windows/cartesian/transpose/sort/find

Time

• humanize/parse/stopwatch/backoff/cron-lite

Random

• ranges/choices/uuid/bytes

Hash

• djb2/fnv1a/murmur3/consistent hash

IO (feature: fs)

• read/write/dirs/find files

Validation

• Luhn, ASCII/UTF-8, IBAN, E.164 phone, US SSN

Encoding

• hex, rot13/caesar

Performance

• Zero runtime dependencies by default (feature-gated extras)
• Zero-cost abstractions
• Optimized for common cases
• Partial no_std support

Comparison with other crates

Crate	What it is	Overlap with toolchest	When to choose it
itertools	Iterator adaptors and utilities	Some collection helpers overlap conceptually (chunking, grouping, cartesian, windows)	You need advanced iterator combinators and zero-allocation streaming transforms
heck	String case conversions	Overlaps with strings::case	You only need case conversion and prefer a focused crate
convert_case	String case conversions	Overlaps with strings::case	Same as above; pick one of these if you only need this
rand	RNGs and distributions	random provides quick, non-crypto helpers only	You need configurable RNGs, distributions, or crypto-secure randomness
time / chrono	Date/time types and parsing	time module has humanize/parse/stopwatch/backoff; not a full datetime stack	You need full-featured datetime, time zones, formatting/parsing
regex	Regular expressions	Minimal overlap; strings/validation provide common checks	You need general-purpose pattern matching
statrs	Statistics and distributions	math has common rounding/stats helpers	You need rich statistical distributions and tests
serde/serde_json	Serialization and JSON	Optional json feature provides helpers around them	You are doing full serialization/deserialization work

Why not just use X?

• If you only need advanced iterator adaptors, use itertools.
• If you need cryptographically secure randomness, distributions, or a configurable RNG, use rand (and friends like rand_chacha).
• If you need full datetime handling (time zones, formatting, parsing), use time or chrono.
• If you need regex-powered text processing, use regex.
• If you only need string case conversion, use heck or convert_case.
• If you need heavy statistics and probability distributions, use statrs.

toolchest aims to cover a broad set of day-to-day utilities with:

• Small, focused APIs you can use in minutes
• Zero default runtime dependencies and feature-gated extras
• Pragmatic, non-crypto defaults where appropriate

It complements the crates above; use them when you need depth, use toolchest when you want breadth without pulling in many dependencies.

Migration from Common Crates

Replacing multiple utility crates with toolchest:

# Before
[dependencies]
convert_case = "0.6"
heck = "0.4"
stringcase = "0.2"

# After
[dependencies]
toolchest = "0.1.0"

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

Licensed under either of:

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT)

at your option.