I don't agree. To me, drop signals that the important point is to destroy the value while |_| () says that the important point is to ignore it. Especially with a primitive type like an integer, it'd be a "huh?" moment.

@birkenfeld Do you have a good example of a case like that?

Something like Some(5).map(|_| ()) makes more sense as Some(5).map(drop) to me.

drop is definitely much more readable imo and other people seem to be confused by "the toilet closure" too: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/bdqxch/actixweb_what_map_err_is_really_doing/

I don't find drop to be readable in an error context. The toilet closure is confusing too, but at least it's become a norm.

People in rust-lang/rust#67672 prefer map(drop).

To me, drop signals that the important point is to destroy the value while |_| () says that the important point is to ignore it.

The same for me. How about alias for drop:

fn ignore<T>(_x: T) { }

fn main() {
    dbg!(Some(5).map(ignore));
}

I may be weird, but I think dropping is empathically not the same as ignoring it. And in Rust, we don't tend to ignore things anyway.

I'm very much not in favour of things doing exactly the same thing but having different names. Toilet closures are unnamed, although I still find drop easier to read. If we were to make an actual exported alias for drop I'd be against that.