Asynchronous Data Processing with async Blocks in Rust

This challenge focuses on utilizing Rust's async blocks to perform asynchronous operations. Asynchronous programming is crucial for building responsive and efficient applications, especially when dealing with I/O-bound tasks like network requests or file operations. Your task is to implement a function that processes a vector of data asynchronously, simulating a time-consuming operation on each element.

Problem Description

You are tasked with creating a Rust function called process_data_async that takes a vector of integers as input and returns a new vector containing the squares of each integer, computed asynchronously. The async block should simulate a time-consuming operation (e.g., a network request or complex calculation) for each element. The function should use tokio for asynchronous runtime.

Key Requirements:

• Asynchronous Processing: Each element of the input vector must be processed asynchronously within an async block.
• Square Calculation: The async block should calculate the square of the input integer.
• tokio Runtime: The code must utilize the tokio asynchronous runtime.
• Return Value: The function must return a Vec<i32> containing the squares of the input integers, in the same order as the input.
• Error Handling: For simplicity, assume no errors occur during the asynchronous operations.

Expected Behavior:

The process_data_async function should take a vector of integers, process each integer asynchronously to calculate its square, and return a new vector containing the calculated squares. The asynchronous processing should not block the main thread, allowing other tasks to execute concurrently.

Edge Cases to Consider:

• Empty Input Vector: The function should handle an empty input vector gracefully, returning an empty vector.
• Large Input Vector: The function should be efficient enough to handle a reasonably large input vector (e.g., 1000 elements) without excessive delays.

Examples

Example 1:

Input: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Output: [1, 4, 9, 16, 25]
Explanation: Each number is processed asynchronously, and its square is added to the output vector.

Example 2:

Input: []
Output: []
Explanation: An empty input vector results in an empty output vector.

Example 3:

Input: [-1, 0, 1]
Output: [1, 0, 1]
Explanation: Negative numbers and zero are handled correctly, producing their squares.

Constraints

• Input Vector Size: The input vector can contain up to 1000 integers.
• Integer Range: Integers in the input vector will be within the range of i32.
• tokio Version: Use a recent version of tokio (e.g., 1.x).
• Execution Time: The function should complete within a reasonable time frame (e.g., less than 1 second for a vector of 1000 elements). While not strictly enforced, excessive delays will be considered a negative factor.

Notes

• You'll need to add tokio as a dependency in your Cargo.toml file.
• The async block is the core of this challenge. Ensure you understand how it works and how to use it with tokio.
• Consider using futures::future::join_all to efficiently process all the asynchronous tasks concurrently. This is a common pattern for parallelizing asynchronous operations.
• The async block should simulate a time-consuming operation. A simple tokio::time::sleep call is sufficient for this purpose. Don't overcomplicate the simulation.