Chapter 5. Memory Management and Safety

Memory management is a fundamental concept to understand for anyone working with a low-level programming language. Low-level languages don't come with automatic memory reclamation solutions like a built-in garbage collector, and it's the responsibility of the programmer to manage memory that's used by the program. Having knowledge of where and how memory gets used in a program enables programmers to build efficient and safe software systems. A lot of bugs in low-level software are due to improper handling of memory. At times, it's the programmer's mistake. The other times, it's the side effect of the programming language used, such as C and C++, which are infamous for a lot of memory vulnerability reports in software. Rust offers a better, compile-time solution to memory management. It makes it hard to write software that leaks memory unless you explicitly intend to! Programmers who have done a fair amount of development with Rust eventually come to...