Rust is famous for its memory management model, which replaces runtime garbage collection with compile-time checks for memory safety. The reason why Rust can work without a garbage collector and still free the programmer from error-prone memory management is simple (but not easy): borrowing and ownership.
While the particulars are quite complex, the high-level view is that the compiler inserts any "provide x amounts of memory" and "remove x amounts of memory" (somewhat like malloc() and free() for C programmers) statements for the developer. Yet how can it do that?
The rules of ownership are as follows:
- The owner of a value is a variable
- At any time, only a single owner is allowed
- The value is lost once the owner ...
