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The Rust Programming Handbook
book

The Rust Programming Handbook

by Francesco Ciulla
December 2025
Beginner
768 pages
15h 34m
English
Packt Publishing
Content preview from The Rust Programming Handbook

11

Smart Pointers and Memory Management

Welcome to Chapter 11!

We are about to begin an exciting chapter: smart pointers!

If you’re familiar with pointers in languages such as C or C++, you may have a particular perception of them.

But Rust’s smart pointers are more than just memory addresses; they function like pointers but have additional metadata and features. They are essential in ensuring Rust’s memory management is both safe and efficient. By the end of this chapter, you will have a solid understanding of smart pointers in general and how Rust utilizes them.

In simple terms, they can be described as granting you some “superpowers” when programming in Rust.

To understand these powerful tools, our exploration in this chapter will cover ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781836208877