Method Receiver
The &self above indicates that the method borrows the object immutably. There
are other possible receivers for a method:
&self: borrows the object from the caller using a shared and immutable reference. The object can be used again afterwards.&mut self: borrows the object from the caller using a unique and mutable reference. The object can be used again afterwards.self: takes ownership of the object and moves it away from the caller. The method becomes the owner of the object. The object will be dropped (deallocated) when the method returns, unless its ownership is explicitly transmitted.mut self: same as above, but while the method owns the object, it can mutate it too. Complete ownership does not automatically mean mutability.- No receiver: this becomes a static method on the struct. Typically used to
create constructors which are called
newby convention.
Beyond variants on self, there are also
special wrapper types
allowed to be receiver types, such as Box<Self>.
Consider emphasizing on “shared and immutable” and “unique and mutable”. These constraints always come
together in Rust due to borrow checker rules, and self is no exception. It won’t be possible to
reference a struct from multiple locations and call a mutating (&mut self) method on it.