Search icon CANCEL
Subscription
0
Cart icon
Your Cart (0 item)
Close icon
You have no products in your basket yet
Save more on your purchases now! discount-offer-chevron-icon
Savings automatically calculated. No voucher code required.
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Rust Quick Start Guide

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

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Oct 2018
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781789616705
Length 180 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Daniel Arbuckle Daniel Arbuckle
Author Profile Icon Daniel Arbuckle
Daniel Arbuckle
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

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...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at $19.99/month. Cancel anytime