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Rs Memory Safety

Deep dive into Rust's core promise: memory safety without a garbage collector via ownership and lifetimes.

jcorpac b986ea0 1021 B Updated
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Rust Memory Safety

Rust's borrow checker is a strict but fair mentor. This skill codifies the patterns for working with it effectively.

The Trinity of Ownership

  1. Ownership: Each value has a single owner.
  2. Borrowing:
    • Unlimited immutable borrows (&T).
    • EXACTLY ONE mutable borrow (&mut T) at a time.
  3. Lifetimes: Ensuring references are never valid longer than the data they point to.

Smart Pointers

  • Box<T>: Heap allocation for data with a known size at compile time.
  • Rc<T> / Arc<T>: Reference counting for shared ownership (Arc is thread-safe).
  • RefCell<T>: Interior mutability (checked at runtime).

Best Practices

  • Prefer borrowing over cloning where possible.
  • Use Struct lifetimes ('a) only when the struct doesn't own its data.
  • Avoid unsafe unless performing FFI or low-level optimizations.

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