Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Rust

Copying and cloning

In Chapter 1, Hello Rust!, we discussed Send, a marker trait that allows a type to be "sent" across multiple threads. Something that's similar but less complex is local moving, which commonly occurs in a program—for example, when you pass a variable into a function.

Copying and cloning, on the other hand, happen on different occasions. When a variable is assigned to another variable, the compiler will typically copy the value implicitly, which can be done safely and cheaply for stack-allocated variables.

Copy is an implicit, bitwise copy of the value of a variable. If that variable is a pointer, the memory responsibility becomes ambiguous (who takes care of freeing?) and compilation will fail. This is where Clone comes ...