Yesterday I had to write a little piece of code that uses a byte buffer that can be "raw" or run-length encoded. I wanted to keep the rest of the code independent and I used a pattern that involves a "fake" allocation in the case of the raw buffer:

    let data = if tip.compressed {
        decode_rle(&abr.buffer, tip.data.start, w, h).unwrap()
    } else {
        Vec::new()
    };
    let data = if tip.compressed {
        &data
    }
    else {
        &abr.buffer[tip.data.clone()]
    };
    // Use data as &[u8] from here...

Obviously it work but is there a better way to do this? I don't particularly like the repeated if and the "fake" allocation of an unused vec.

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