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Rust Quick Start Guide

You're reading from   Rust Quick Start Guide The easiest way to learn Rust programming

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Product type Paperback
Published in Oct 2018
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781789616705
Length 180 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Author (1):
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Daniel Arbuckle Daniel Arbuckle
Author Profile Icon Daniel Arbuckle
Daniel Arbuckle
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Table of Contents (10) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Getting Ready FREE CHAPTER 2. Basics of the Rust Language 3. The Big Ideas – Ownership and Borrowing 4. Making Decisions by Pattern Matching 5. One Data Type Representing Multiple Kinds of Data 6. Heap Memory and Smart Pointers 7. Generic Types 8. Important Standard Traits 9. Other Books You May Enjoy

Heap Memory and Smart Pointers

We've talked about the stack, and how it is the place where Rust stores data and keeps track of what needs to be kept around and what needs to be cleaned up. It's a powerful, useful mechanism, but it's not right for everything.

Imagine we have a variable that contains an image. It takes up several megabytes of memory, and we need to transfer ownership of it between various parts of our program at different times. If we just put it on the stack, and allow Rust to move it into new scopes as needed, everything will work, but it will be slowed down by the need to copy those megabytes of data every time it moves the value to a new owner.

That's not the only scenario where storing information on the stack isn't ideal, but it's a good illustration.

On the other hand, the last thing we want to do is to break the stack and scope...

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