5 Working with memory

In chapter 4, we discussed Rust’s data structures, but to complete our understanding, we also need to discuss memory management and how it works with Rust’s data structures. The core data structures provide nice abstractions for managing memory allocation and deallocation, but some applications may require more advanced features that require custom allocators, reference counting, smart pointers, or system-level features that are outside the scope of the Rust language.

It’s possible to effectively use Rust without having a deep understanding of memory management, but there are many cases in which it’s quite beneficial to know what’s going on under the hood, so to speak. In this chapter, we’ll get into the details of Rust’s memory management.

5.1 Memory management: Heap and stack

5.2 Understanding ownership: Copies, borrowing, references, and moves

5.3 Deep copying

5.4 Avoiding copies

5.5 To box or not to box: Smart pointers

5.6 Reference counting

5.7 Clone on write

5.8 Custom allocators

5.8.1 Writing a custom allocator

5.8.2 Creating a custom allocator for protected memory

5.9 Smart pointers summarized

Summary