Memory Management in Rust
Memory management in Rust is a mix:
- Safe and correct like Java, but without a garbage collector.
- Depending on which abstraction (or combination of abstractions) you choose, can be a single unique pointer, reference counted, or atomically reference counted.
- Scope-based like C++, but the compiler enforces full adherence.
- A Rust user can choose the right abstraction for the situation, some even have no cost at runtime like C.
It achieves this by modeling ownership explicitly.
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If asked how at this point, you can mention that in Rust this is usually handled by RAII wrapper types such as Box, Vec, Rc, or Arc. These encapsulate ownership and memory allocation via various means, and prevent the potential errors in C.
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You may be asked about destructors here, the Drop trait is the Rust equivalent.