The Rustonomicon

Contents

The Rustonomicon 3

1 Meet Safe and Unsafe 5

1.1 How Safe and Unsafe Interact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 What Unsafe Rust Can Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3 Working with Unsafe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2 Data Representation in Rust 13

2.1 repr(Rust) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Exotically Sized Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 Alternative representations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3 Ownership and Lifetimes 22

3.1 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2 Aliasing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.3 Lifetimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.4 Limits of Lifetimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.5 Lifetime Elision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.6 Unbounded Lifetimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.7 Higher-Rank Trait Bounds (HRTBs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.8 Subtyping and Variance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.9 Drop Check . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.10 PhantomData . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.11 Splitting Borrows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

4 Type Conversions 58
4.1 Coercions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.2 The Dot Operator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.3 Casts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.4 Transmutes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

5 Working With Uninitialized Memory 64

5.1 Checked Uninitialized Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.2 Drop Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.3 Unchecked Uninitialized Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

6 The Perils Of Ownership Based Resource Management (OBRM) 71

6.1 Constructors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
6.2 Destructors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

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 6.3 Leaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

7 Unwinding 80
7.1 Exception Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
7.2 Poisoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

8 Concurrency and Parallelism 86

8.1 Data Races and Race Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
8.2 Send and Sync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
8.3 Atomics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

9 Example: Implementing Vec 97

9.1 Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
9.2 Allocating Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
9.3 Push and Pop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
9.4 Deallocating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
9.5 Deref . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9.6 Insert and Remove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9.7 IntoIter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
9.8 RawVec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
9.9 Drain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
9.10 Handling Zero-Sized Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
9.11 The Final Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

10 Implementing Arc and Mutex 124

10.1 Implementing Arc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
10.1.1 Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
10.1.2 Base Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
10.1.3 Cloning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
10.1.4 Dropping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
10.1.5 Final Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

11 Foreign Function Interface 133

12 Beneath std 148

12.1 #[panic_handler] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

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The Rustonomicon

Warning: This book is incomplete. Documenting everything and rewriting outdated parts
take a while. See the issue tracker to check what's missing/outdated, and if there are any
mistakes or ideas that haven't been reported, feel free to open a new issue there.

The Dark Arts of Unsafe Rust

THE KNOWLEDGE IS PROVIDED ”AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
UNLEASHING INDESCRIBABLE HORRORS THAT SHATTER YOUR PSYCHE AND SET
YOUR MIND ADRIFT IN THE UNKNOWABLY INFINITE COSMOS.
The Rustonomicon digs into all the awful details that you need to understand when writing
Unsafe Rust programs.
Should you wish a long and happy career of writing Rust programs, you should turn back
now and forget you ever saw this book. It is not necessary. However if you intend to write
unsafe code — or just want to dig into the guts of the language — this book contains lots of
useful information.
Unlike The Rust Programming Language, we will be assuming considerable prior knowledge.
In particular, you should be comfortable with basic systems programming and Rust. If you
don't feel comfortable with these topics, you should consider reading The Book first. That
said, we won't assume you have read it, and we will take care to occasionally give a refresher
on the basics where appropriate. You can skip straight to this book if you want; just know
that we won't be explaining everything from the ground up.
This book exists primarily as a high-level companion to The Reference. Where The Reference
exists to detail the syntax and semantics of every part of the language, The Rustonomicon
exists to describe how to use those pieces together, and the issues that you will have in doing
so.
The Reference will tell you the syntax and semantics of references, destructors, and unwind-
ing, but it won't tell you how combining them can lead to exception-safety issues, or how to
deal with those issues.
It should be noted that we haven't synced The Rustnomicon and The Reference well, so they
may have duplicate content. In general, if the two documents disagree, The Reference should
be assumed to be correct (it isn't yet considered normative, it's just better maintained).
Topics that are within the scope of this book include: the meaning of (un)safety, unsafe primi-
tives provided by the language and standard library, techniques for creating safe abstractions

3
with those unsafe primitives, subtyping and variance, exception-safety (panic/unwind-safety),
working with uninitialized memory, type punning, concurrency, interoperating with other
languages (FFI), optimization tricks, how constructs lower to compiler/OS/hardware prim-
itives, how to not make the memory model people angry, how you're going to make the
memory model people angry, and more.
The Rustonomicon is not a place to exhaustively describe the semantics and guarantees of
every single API in the standard library, nor is it a place to exhaustively describe every feature
of Rust.
Unless otherwise noted, Rust code in this book uses the Rust 2021 edition.

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Chapter 1

Meet Safe and Unsafe

It would be great to not have to worry about low-level implementation details. Who could
possibly care how much space the empty tuple occupies? Sadly, it sometimes matters and we
need to worry about it. The most common reason developers start to care about implemen-
tation details is performance, but more importantly, these details can become a matter of
correctness when interfacing directly with hardware, operating systems, or other languages.
When implementation details start to matter in a safe programming language, programmers
usually have three options:
• fiddle with the code to encourage the compiler/runtime to perform an optimization
• adopt a more unidiomatic or cumbersome design to get the desired implementation
• rewrite the implementation in a language that lets you deal with those details
For that last option, the language programmers tend to use is C. This is often necessary to
interface with systems that only declare a C interface.
Unfortunately, C is incredibly unsafe to use (sometimes for good reason), and this unsafety is
magnified when trying to interoperate with another language. Care must be taken to ensure
C and the other language agree on what's happening, and that they don't step on each other's
toes.
So what does this have to do with Rust?

5
Well, unlike C, Rust is a safe programming language.
But, like C, Rust is an unsafe programming language.
More accurately, Rust contains both a safe and unsafe programming language.
Rust can be thought of as a combination of two programming languages: Safe Rust and Unsafe
Rust. Conveniently, these names mean exactly what they say: Safe Rust is Safe. Unsafe Rust
is, well, not. In fact, Unsafe Rust lets us do some really unsafe things. Things the Rust authors
will implore you not to do, but we'll do anyway.
Safe Rust is the true Rust programming language. If all you do is write Safe Rust, you will
never have to worry about type-safety or memory-safety. You will never endure a dangling
pointer, a use-after-free, or any other kind of Undefined Behavior (a.k.a. UB).
The standard library also gives you enough utilities out of the box that you'll be able to write
high-performance applications and libraries in pure idiomatic Safe Rust.
But maybe you want to talk to another language. Maybe you're writing a low-level abstraction
not exposed by the standard library. Maybe you're writing the standard library (which is
written entirely in Rust). Maybe you need to do something the type-system doesn't understand
and just frob some dang bits. Maybe you need Unsafe Rust.
Unsafe Rust is exactly like Safe Rust with all the same rules and semantics. It just lets you do
some extra things that are Definitely Not Safe (which we will define in the next section).
The value of this separation is that we gain the benefits of using an unsafe language like C
— low level control over implementation details — without most of the problems that come
with trying to integrate it with a completely different safe language.
There are still some problems — most notably, we must become aware of properties that the
type system assumes and audit them in any code that interacts with Unsafe Rust. That's the
purpose of this book: to teach you about these assumptions and how to manage them.

1.1 How Safe and Unsafe Interact

What's the relationship between Safe Rust and Unsafe Rust? How do they interact?
The separation between Safe Rust and Unsafe Rust is controlled with the unsafe keyword,
which acts as an interface from one to the other. This is why we can say Safe Rust is a safe
language: all the unsafe parts are kept exclusively behind the unsafe boundary. If you wish,
you can even toss #![forbid(unsafe_code)] into your code base to statically guarantee
that you're only writing Safe Rust.
The unsafe keyword has two uses: to declare the existence of contracts the compiler can't
check, and to declare that a programmer has checked that these contracts have been upheld.
You can use unsafe to indicate the existence of unchecked contracts on functions and trait
declarations. On functions, unsafe means that users of the function must check that function's
documentation to ensure they are using it in a way that maintains the contracts the function
requires. On trait declarations, unsafe means that implementors of the trait must check
the trait documentation to ensure their implementation maintains the contracts the trait
requires.
You can use unsafe on a block to declare that all unsafe actions performed within are
verified to uphold the contracts of those operations. For instance, the index passed to

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slice::get_unchecked is in-bounds.
You can use unsafe on a trait implementation to declare that the implementation upholds
the trait's contract. For instance, that a type implementing Send is really safe to move to
another thread.
The standard library has a number of unsafe functions, including:
• slice::get_unchecked, which performs unchecked indexing, allowing memory
safety to be freely violated.
• mem::transmute reinterprets some value as having a given type, bypassing type safety
in arbitrary ways (see conversions for details).
• Every raw pointer to a sized type has an offset method that invokes Undefined Behavior
if the passed offset is not ”in bounds”.
• All FFI (Foreign Function Interface) functions are unsafe to call because the other
language can do arbitrary operations that the Rust compiler can't check.
As of Rust 1.29.2 the standard library defines the following unsafe traits (there are others, but
they are not stabilized yet and some of them may never be):
• Send is a marker trait (a trait with no API) that promises implementors are safe to send
(move) to another thread.
• Sync is a marker trait that promises threads can safely share implementors through a
shared reference.
• GlobalAlloc allows customizing the memory allocator of the whole program.
Much of the Rust standard library also uses Unsafe Rust internally. These implementations
have generally been rigorously manually checked, so the Safe Rust interfaces built on top of
these implementations can be assumed to be safe.
The need for all of this separation boils down a single fundamental property of Safe Rust, the
soundness property:
No matter what, Safe Rust can't cause Undefined Behavior.
The design of the safe/unsafe split means that there is an asymmetric trust relationship
between Safe and Unsafe Rust. Safe Rust inherently has to trust that any Unsafe Rust it
touches has been written correctly. On the other hand, Unsafe Rust cannot trust Safe Rust
without care.
As an example, Rust has the PartialOrd and Ord traits to differentiate between types which
can ”just” be compared, and those that provide a ”total” ordering (which basically means
that comparison behaves reasonably).
BTreeMap doesn't really make sense for partially-ordered types, and so it requires that its
keys implement Ord. However, BTreeMap has Unsafe Rust code inside of its implementation.
Because it would be unacceptable for a sloppy Ord implementation (which is Safe to write) to
cause Undefined Behavior, the Unsafe code in BTreeMap must be written to be robust against
Ord implementations which aren't actually total — even though that's the whole point of
requiring Ord.
The Unsafe Rust code just can't trust the Safe Rust code to be written correctly. That said,
BTreeMap will still behave completely erratically if you feed in values that don't have a total
ordering. It just won't ever cause Undefined Behavior.
One may wonder, if BTreeMap cannot trust Ord because it's Safe, why can it trust any Safe
code? For instance BTreeMap relies on integers and slices to be implemented correctly. Those

7
are safe too, right?
The difference is one of scope. When BTreeMap relies on integers and slices, it's relying on
one very specific implementation. This is a measured risk that can be weighed against the
benefit. In this case there's basically zero risk; if integers and slices are broken, everyone is
broken. Also, they're maintained by the same people who maintain BTreeMap, so it's easy to
keep tabs on them.
On the other hand, BTreeMap's key type is generic. Trusting its Ord implementation means
trusting every Ord implementation in the past, present, and future. Here the risk is high:
someone somewhere is going to make a mistake and mess up their Ord implementation, or
even just straight up lie about providing a total ordering because ”it seems to work”. When
that happens, BTreeMap needs to be prepared.
The same logic applies to trusting a closure that's passed to you to behave correctly.
This problem of unbounded generic trust is the problem that unsafe traits exist to resolve. The
BTreeMap type could theoretically require that keys implement a new trait called UnsafeOrd,
rather than Ord, that might look like this:
use std::cmp::Ordering;

unsafe trait UnsafeOrd {

fn cmp(&self, other: &Self) -> Ordering;
}
Then, a type would use unsafe to implement UnsafeOrd, indicating that they've ensured their
implementation maintains whatever contracts the trait expects. In this situation, the Unsafe
Rust in the internals of BTreeMap would be justified in trusting that the key type's UnsafeOrd
implementation is correct. If it isn't, it's the fault of the unsafe trait implementation, which is
consistent with Rust's safety guarantees.
The decision of whether to mark a trait unsafe is an API design choice. A safe trait is easier
to implement, but any unsafe code that relies on it must defend against incorrect behavior.
Marking a trait unsafe shifts this responsibility to the implementor. Rust has traditionally
avoided marking traits unsafe because it makes Unsafe Rust pervasive, which isn't desirable.
Send and Sync are marked unsafe because thread safety is a fundamental property that unsafe
code can't possibly hope to defend against in the way it could defend against a buggy Ord
implementation. Similarly, GlobalAllocator is keeping accounts of all the memory in the
program and other things like Box or Vec build on top of it. If it does something weird (giving
the same chunk of memory to another request when it is still in use), there's no chance to
detect that and do anything about it.
The decision of whether to mark your own traits unsafe depends on the same sort of consid-
eration. If unsafe code can't reasonably expect to defend against a broken implementation
of the trait, then marking the trait unsafe is a reasonable choice.
As an aside, while Send and Sync are unsafe traits, they are also automatically implemented
for types when such derivations are provably safe to do. Send is automatically derived for
all types composed only of values whose types also implement Send. Sync is automatically
derived for all types composed only of values whose types also implement Sync. This mini-
mizes the pervasive unsafety of making these two traits unsafe. And not many people are
going to implement memory allocators (or use them directly, for that matter).
This is the balance between Safe and Unsafe Rust. The separation is designed to make using

8
Safe Rust as ergonomic as possible, but requires extra effort and care when writing Unsafe
Rust. The rest of this book is largely a discussion of the sort of care that must be taken, and
what contracts Unsafe Rust must uphold.

1.2 What Unsafe Rust Can Do

The only things that are different in Unsafe Rust are that you can:
• Dereference raw pointers
• Call unsafe functions (including C functions, compiler intrinsics, and the raw allocator)
• Implement unsafe traits
• Access or modify mutable statics
• Access fields of unions
That's it. The reason these operations are relegated to Unsafe is that misusing any of these
things will cause the ever dreaded Undefined Behavior. Invoking Undefined Behavior gives
the compiler full rights to do arbitrarily bad things to your program. You definitely should
not invoke Undefined Behavior.
Unlike C, Undefined Behavior is pretty limited in scope in Rust. All the core language cares
about is preventing the following things:
• Dereferencing (using the * operator on) dangling or unaligned pointers (see below)
• Breaking the pointer aliasing rules
• Calling a function with the wrong call ABI or unwinding from a function with the wrong
unwind ABI.
• Causing a data race
• Executing code compiled with target features that the current thread of execution does
not support
• Producing invalid values (either alone or as a field of a compound type such as
enum/struct/array/tuple):
– a bool that isn't 0 or 1
– an enum with an invalid discriminant
– a null fn pointer
– a char outside the ranges [0x0, 0xD7FF] and [0xE000, 0x10FFFF]
– a ! (all values are invalid for this type)
– an integer (i*/u*), floating point value (f*), or raw pointer read from uninitialized
memory, or uninitialized memory in a str.
– a reference/Box that is dangling, unaligned, or points to an invalid value.
– a wide reference, Box, or raw pointer that has invalid metadata:
* dyn Trait metadata is invalid if it is not a pointer to a vtable for Trait that
matches the actual dynamic trait the pointer or reference points to
* slice metadata is invalid if the length is not a valid usize (i.e., it must not be
read from uninitialized memory)
– a type with custom invalid values that is one of those values, such as a NonNull
that is null. (Requesting custom invalid values is an unstable feature, but some
stable libstd types, like NonNull, make use of it.)
For a more detailed explanation about ”Undefined Bahavior”, you may refer to the reference.
”Producing” a value happens any time a value is assigned, passed to a function/primitive
operation or returned from a function/primitive operation.

9
A reference/pointer is ”dangling” if it is null or not all of the bytes it points to are part of
the same allocation (so in particular they all have to be part of some allocation). The span
of bytes it points to is determined by the pointer value and the size of the pointee type. As
a consequence, if the span is empty, ”dangling” is the same as ”null”. Note that slices and
strings point to their entire range, so it's important that the length metadata is never too large
(in particular, allocations and therefore slices and strings cannot be bigger than isize::MAX
bytes). If for some reason this is too cumbersome, consider using raw pointers.
That's it. That's all the causes of Undefined Behavior baked into Rust. Of course, unsafe
functions and traits are free to declare arbitrary other constraints that a program must main-
tain to avoid Undefined Behavior. For instance, the allocator APIs declare that deallocating
unallocated memory is Undefined Behavior.
However, violations of these constraints generally will just transitively lead to one of the
above problems. Some additional constraints may also derive from compiler intrinsics that
make special assumptions about how code can be optimized. For instance, Vec and Box make
use of intrinsics that require their pointers to be non-null at all times.
Rust is otherwise quite permissive with respect to other dubious operations. Rust considers
it ”safe” to:
• Deadlock
• Have a race condition
• Leak memory
• Overflow integers (with the built-in operators such as + etc.)
• Abort the program
• Delete the production database
For more detailed information, you may refer to the reference.
However any program that actually manages to do such a thing is probably incorrect. Rust
provides lots of tools to make these things rare, but these problems are considered impractical
to categorically prevent.

1.3 Working with Unsafe

Rust generally only gives us the tools to talk about Unsafe Rust in a scoped and binary manner.
Unfortunately, reality is significantly more complicated than that. For instance, consider the
following toy function:
fn index(idx: usize, arr: &[u8]) -> Option<u8> {
if idx < arr.len() {
unsafe {
Some(*arr.get_unchecked(idx))
}
} else {
None
}
}
This function is safe and correct. We check that the index is in bounds, and if it is, index
into the array in an unchecked manner. We say that such a correct unsafely implemented
function is sound, meaning that safe code cannot cause Undefined Behavior through it (which,
remember, is the single fundamental property of Safe Rust).

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But even in such a trivial function, the scope of the unsafe block is questionable. Consider
changing the < to a <=:
fn index(idx: usize, arr: &[u8]) -> Option<u8> {
if idx <= arr.len() {
unsafe {
Some(*arr.get_unchecked(idx))
}
} else {
None
}
}
This program is now unsound, Safe Rust can cause Undefined Behavior, and yet we only
modified safe code. This is the fundamental problem of safety: it's non-local. The soundness
of our unsafe operations necessarily depends on the state established by otherwise ”safe”
operations.
Safety is modular in the sense that opting into unsafety doesn't require you to consider
arbitrary other kinds of badness. For instance, doing an unchecked index into a slice doesn't
mean you suddenly need to worry about the slice being null or containing uninitialized
memory. Nothing fundamentally changes. However safety isn't modular in the sense that
programs are inherently stateful and your unsafe operations may depend on arbitrary other
state.
This non-locality gets much worse when we incorporate actual persistent state. Consider a
simple implementation of Vec:
use std::ptr;

// Note: This definition is naive. See the chapter on implementing Vec.

pub struct Vec<T> {
ptr: *mut T,
len: usize,
cap: usize,
}

// Note this implementation does not correctly handle zero-sized types.

// See the chapter on implementing Vec.
impl<T> Vec<T> {
pub fn push(&mut self, elem: T) {
if self.len == self.cap {
// not important for this example
self.reallocate();
}
unsafe {
ptr::write(self.ptr.add(self.len), elem);
self.len += 1;
}
}
}
This code is simple enough to reasonably audit and informally verify. Now consider adding
the following method:

11
fn make_room(&mut self) {
// grow the capacity
self.cap += 1;
}
This code is 100% Safe Rust but it is also completely unsound. Changing the capacity violates
the invariants of Vec (that cap reflects the allocated space in the Vec). This is not something
the rest of Vec can guard against. It has to trust the capacity field because there's no way to
verify it.
Because it relies on invariants of a struct field, this unsafe code does more than pollute a
whole function: it pollutes a whole module. Generally, the only bullet-proof way to limit the
scope of unsafe code is at the module boundary with privacy.
However this works perfectly. The existence of make_room is not a problem for the soundness
of Vec because we didn't mark it as public. Only the module that defines this function can
call it. Also, make_room directly accesses the private fields of Vec, so it can only be written in
the same module as Vec.
It is therefore possible for us to write a completely safe abstraction that relies on complex
invariants. This is critical to the relationship between Safe Rust and Unsafe Rust.
We have already seen that Unsafe code must trust some Safe code, but shouldn't trust generic
Safe code. Privacy is important to unsafe code for similar reasons: it prevents us from having
to trust all the safe code in the universe from messing with our trusted state.
Safety lives!

12
Chapter 2

Data Representation in Rust

Low-level programming cares a lot about data layout. It's a big deal. It also pervasively influ-
ences the rest of the language, so we're going to start by digging into how data is represented
in Rust.
This chapter is ideally in agreement with, and rendered redundant by, the Type Layout section
of the Reference. When this book was first written, the reference was in complete disrepair,
and the Rustonomicon was attempting to serve as a partial replacement for the reference.
This is no longer the case, so this whole chapter can ideally be deleted.
We'll keep this chapter around for a bit longer, but ideally you should be contributing any
new facts or improvements to the Reference instead.

2.1 repr(Rust)
First and foremost, all types have an alignment specified in bytes. The alignment of a type
specifies what addresses are valid to store the value at. A value with alignment n must only
be stored at an address that is a multiple of n. So alignment 2 means you must be stored at
an even address, and 1 means that you can be stored anywhere. Alignment is at least 1, and
always a power of 2.
Primitives are usually aligned to their size, although this is platform-specific behavior. For
example, on x86 u64 and f64 are often aligned to 4 bytes (32 bits).
A type's size must always be a multiple of its alignment (Zero being a valid size for any
alignment). This ensures that an array of that type may always be indexed by offsetting by a
multiple of its size. Note that the size and alignment of a type may not be known statically in
the case of dynamically sized types.
Rust gives you the following ways to lay out composite data:
• structs (named product types)
• tuples (anonymous product types)
• arrays (homogeneous product types)
• enums (named sum types -- tagged unions)
• unions (untagged unions)
An enum is said to be field-less if none of its variants have associated data.

13
By default, composite structures have an alignment equal to the maximum of their fields'
alignments. Rust will consequently insert padding where necessary to ensure that all fields
are properly aligned and that the overall type's size is a multiple of its alignment. For instance:
struct A {
a: u8,
b: u32,
c: u16,
}
will be 32-bit aligned on a target that aligns these primitives to their respective sizes. The
whole struct will therefore have a size that is a multiple of 32-bits. It may become:
struct A {
a: u8,
_pad1: [u8; 3], // to align `b`
b: u32,
c: u16,
_pad2: [u8; 2], // to make overall size multiple of 4
}
or maybe:
struct A {
b: u32,
c: u16,
a: u8,
_pad: u8,
}
There is no indirection for these types; all data is stored within the struct, as you would expect
in C. However with the exception of arrays (which are densely packed and in-order), the
layout of data is not specified by default. Given the two following struct definitions:
struct A {
a: i32,
b: u64,
}

struct B {
a: i32,
b: u64,
}
Rust does guarantee that two instances of A have their data laid out in exactly the same way.
However Rust does not currently guarantee that an instance of A has the same field ordering
or padding as an instance of B.
With A and B as written, this point would seem to be pedantic, but several other features of
Rust make it desirable for the language to play with data layout in complex ways.
For instance, consider this struct:
struct Foo<T, U> {
count: u16,
data1: T,

14
 data2: U,
}
Now consider the monomorphizations of Foo<u32, u16> and Foo<u16, u32>. If Rust lays
out the fields in the order specified, we expect it to pad the values in the struct to satisfy their
alignment requirements. So if Rust didn't reorder fields, we would expect it to produce the
following:
struct Foo<u16, u32> {
count: u16,
data1: u16,
data2: u32,
}

struct Foo<u32, u16> {

count: u16,
_pad1: u16,
data1: u32,
data2: u16,
_pad2: u16,
}
The latter case quite simply wastes space. An optimal use of space requires different monomor-
phizations to have different field orderings.
Enums make this consideration even more complicated. Naively, an enum such as:
enum Foo {
A(u32),
B(u64),
C(u8),
}
might be laid out as:
struct FooRepr {
data: u64, // this is either a u64, u32, or u8 based on `tag`
tag: u8, // 0 = A, 1 = B, 2 = C
}
And indeed this is approximately how it would be laid out (modulo the size and position of
tag).
However there are several cases where such a representation is inefficient. The classic case
of this is Rust's ”null pointer optimization”: an enum consisting of a single outer unit variant
(e.g. None) and a (potentially nested) non- nullable pointer variant (e.g. Some(&T)) makes
the tag unnecessary. A null pointer can safely be interpreted as the unit (None) variant. The
net result is that, for example, size_of::<Option<&T>>() == size_of::<&T>().
There are many types in Rust that are, or contain, non-nullable pointers such as Box<T>,
Vec<T>, String, &T, and &mut T. Similarly, one can imagine nested enums pooling their tags
into a single discriminant, as they are by definition known to have a limited range of valid
values. In principle enums could use fairly elaborate algorithms to store bits throughout
nested types with forbidden values. As such it is especially desirable that we leave enum
layout unspecified today.

15
2.2 Exotically Sized Types
Most of the time, we expect types to have a statically known and positive size. This isn't
always the case in Rust.

Dynamically Sized Types (DSTs)

Rust supports Dynamically Sized Types (DSTs): types without a statically known size or
alignment. On the surface, this is a bit nonsensical: Rust must know the size and alignment
of something in order to correctly work with it! In this regard, DSTs are not normal types.
Because they lack a statically known size, these types can only exist behind a pointer. Any
pointer to a DST consequently becomes a wide pointer consisting of the pointer and the
information that ”completes” them (more on this below).
There are two major DSTs exposed by the language:
• trait objects: dyn MyTrait
• slices: [T], str, and others
A trait object represents some type that implements the traits it specifies. The exact original
type is erased in favor of runtime reflection with a vtable containing all the information
necessary to use the type. The information that completes a trait object pointer is the vtable
pointer. The runtime size of the pointee can be dynamically requested from the vtable.
A slice is simply a view into some contiguous storage -- typically an array or Vec. The
information that completes a slice pointer is just the number of elements it points to. The
runtime size of the pointee is just the statically known size of an element multiplied by the
number of elements.
Structs can actually store a single DST directly as their last field, but this makes them a DST
as well:
// Can't be stored on the stack directly
struct MySuperSlice {
info: u32,
data: [u8],
}
Although such a type is largely useless without a way to construct it. Currently the only
properly supported way to create a custom DST is by making your type generic and performing
an unsizing coercion:
struct MySuperSliceable<T: ?Sized> {
info: u32,
data: T,
}

fn main() {
let sized: MySuperSliceable<[u8; 8]> = MySuperSliceable {
info: 17,
data: [0; 8],
};

let dynamic: &MySuperSliceable<[u8]> = &sized;

16
 // prints: "17 [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]"
println!("{} {:?}", dynamic.info, &dynamic.data);
}
(Yes, custom DSTs are a largely half-baked feature for now.)

Zero Sized Types (ZSTs)

Rust also allows types to be specified that occupy no space:
struct Nothing; // No fields = no size

// All fields have no size = no size

struct LotsOfNothing {
foo: Nothing,
qux: (), // empty tuple has no size
baz: [u8; 0], // empty array has no size
}
On their own, Zero Sized Types (ZSTs) are, for obvious reasons, pretty useless. However as
with many curious layout choices in Rust, their potential is realized in a generic context: Rust
largely understands that any operation that produces or stores a ZST can be reduced to a
no-op. First off, storing it doesn't even make sense -- it doesn't occupy any space. Also there's
only one value of that type, so anything that loads it can just produce it from the aether --
which is also a no-op since it doesn't occupy any space.
One of the most extreme examples of this is Sets and Maps. Given a Map<Key, Value>, it is
common to implement a Set<Key> as just a thin wrapper around Map<Key, UselessJunk>.
In many languages, this would necessitate allocating space for UselessJunk and doing work
to store and load UselessJunk only to discard it. Proving this unnecessary would be a difficult
analysis for the compiler.
However in Rust, we can just say that Set<Key> = Map<Key, ()>. Now Rust statically
knows that every load and store is useless, and no allocation has any size. The result is that
the monomorphized code is basically a custom implementation of a HashSet with none of
the overhead that HashMap would have to support values.
Safe code need not worry about ZSTs, but unsafe code must be careful about the consequence
of types with no size. In particular, pointer offsets are no-ops, and allocators typically require
a non-zero size.
Note that references to ZSTs (including empty slices), just like all other references, must be
non-null and suitably aligned. Dereferencing a null or unaligned pointer to a ZST is undefined
behavior, just like for any other type.

Empty Types
Rust also enables types to be declared that cannot even be instantiated. These types can only
be talked about at the type level, and never at the value level. Empty types can be declared
by specifying an enum with no variants:
enum Void {} // No variants = EMPTY

17
Empty types are even more marginal than ZSTs. The primary motivating example for an
empty type is type-level unreachability. For instance, suppose an API needs to return a Result
in general, but a specific case actually is infallible. It's actually possible to communicate this
at the type level by returning a Result<T, Void>. Consumers of the API can confidently
unwrap such a Result knowing that it's statically impossible for this value to be an Err, as
this would require providing a value of type Void.
In principle, Rust can do some interesting analyses and optimizations based on this fact. For
instance, Result<T, Void> is represented as just T, because the Err case doesn't actually
exist (strictly speaking, this is only an optimization that is not guaranteed, so for example
transmuting one into the other is still Undefined Behavior).
The following also compiles:
enum Void {}

let res: Result<u32, Void> = Ok(0);

// Err doesn't exist anymore, so Ok is actually irrefutable.

let Ok(num) = res;
One final subtle detail about empty types is that raw pointers to them are actually valid to
construct, but dereferencing them is Undefined Behavior because that wouldn't make sense.
We recommend against modelling C's void* type with *const Void. A lot of people started
doing that but quickly ran into trouble because Rust doesn't really have any safety guards
against trying to instantiate empty types with unsafe code, and if you do it, it's Undefined
Behavior. This was especially problematic because developers had a habit of converting raw
pointers to references and &Void is also Undefined Behavior to construct.
*const () (or equivalent) works reasonably well for void*, and can be made into a reference
without any safety problems. It still doesn't prevent you from trying to read or write values,
but at least it compiles to a no-op instead of Undefined Behavior.

Extern Types
There is an accepted RFC to add proper types with an unknown size, called extern types,
which would let Rust developers model things like C's void* and other ”declared but never
defined” types more accurately. However as of Rust 2018, the feature is stuck in limbo over
how size_of_val::<MyExternType>() should behave.

2.3 Alternative representations

Rust allows you to specify alternative data layout strategies from the default. There's also the
unsafe code guidelines (note that it's NOT normative).

repr(C)
This is the most important repr. It has fairly simple intent: do what C does. The order,
size, and alignment of fields is exactly what you would expect from C or C++. Any type you
expect to pass through an FFI boundary should have repr(C), as C is the lingua-franca of

18
the programming world. This is also necessary to soundly do more elaborate tricks with data
layout such as reinterpreting values as a different type.
We strongly recommend using rust-bindgen and/or cbindgen to manage your FFI boundaries
for you. The Rust team works closely with those projects to ensure that they work robustly
and are compatible with current and future guarantees about type layouts and reprs.
The interaction of repr(C) with Rust's more exotic data layout features must be kept in mind.
Due to its dual purpose as ”for FFI” and ”for layout control”, repr(C) can be applied to types
that will be nonsensical or problematic if passed through the FFI boundary.
• ZSTs are still zero-sized, even though this is not a standard behavior in C, and is explicitly
contrary to the behavior of an empty type in C++, which says they should still consume
a byte of space.
• DST pointers (wide pointers) and tuples are not a concept in C, and as such are never
FFI-safe.
• Enums with fields also aren't a concept in C or C++, but a valid bridging of the types is
defined.
• If T is an FFI-safe non-nullable pointer type, Option<T> is guaranteed to have the same
layout and ABI as T and is therefore also FFI-safe. As of this writing, this covers &, &mut,
and function pointers, all of which can never be null.
• Tuple structs are like structs with regards to repr(C), as the only difference from a
struct is that the fields aren’t named.
• repr(C) is equivalent to one of repr(u*) (see the next section) for fieldless enums.
The chosen size and sign is the default enum size and sign for the target platform's C
application binary interface (ABI). Note that enum representation in C is implementation
defined, so this is really a ”best guess”. In particular, this may be incorrect when the C
code of interest is compiled with certain flags.
• Fieldless enums with repr(C) or repr(u*) still may not be set to an integer value
without a corresponding variant, even though this is permitted behavior in C or C++.
It is undefined behavior to (unsafely) construct an instance of an enum that does not
match one of its variants. (This allows exhaustive matches to continue to be written
and compiled as normal.)

repr(transparent)
#[repr(transparent)] can only be used on a struct or single-variant enum that has a single
non-zero-sized field (there may be additional zero-sized fields). The effect is that the layout
and ABI of the whole struct/enum is guaranteed to be the same as that one field.
NOTE: There's a transparent_unions nightly feature to apply repr(transparent)
to unions, but it hasn't been stabilized due to design concerns. See the tracking
issue for more details.
The goal is to make it possible to transmute between the single field and the struct/enum. An
example of that is UnsafeCell, which can be transmuted into the type it wraps (UnsafeCell
also uses the unstable no_niche, so its ABI is not actually guaranteed to be the same when
nested in other types).

19
Also, passing the struct/enum through FFI where the inner field type is expected on the other
side is guaranteed to work. In particular, this is necessary for struct Foo(f32) or enum
Foo { Bar(f32) } to always have the same ABI as f32.
This repr is only considered part of the public ABI of a type if either the single field is pub, or
if its layout is documented in prose. Otherwise, the layout should not be relied upon by other
crates.
More details are in the RFC 1758 and the RFC 2645.

repr(u*), repr(i*)
These specify the size and sign to make a fieldless enum. If the discriminant overflows the
integer it has to fit in, it will produce a compile-time error. You can manually ask Rust to
allow this by setting the overflowing element to explicitly be 0. However Rust will not allow
you to create an enum where two variants have the same discriminant.
The term ”fieldless enum” only means that the enum doesn't have data in any of its variants.
A fieldless enum without a repr(u*) or repr(C) is still a Rust native type, and does not have
a stable ABI representation. Adding a repr causes it to be treated exactly like the specified
integer type for ABI purposes.
If the enum has fields, the effect is similar to the effect of repr(C) in that there is a defined
layout of the type. This makes it possible to pass the enum to C code, or access the type's raw
representation and directly manipulate its tag and fields. See the RFC for details.
These reprs have no effect on a struct.
Adding an explicit repr(u*), repr(i*), or repr(C) to an enum with fields suppresses the
null-pointer optimization, like:
enum MyOption<T> {
Some(T),
None,
}

enum MyReprOption<T> {
Some(T),
None,
}

assert_eq!(8, size_of::<MyOption<&u16>>());
assert_eq!(16, size_of::<MyReprOption<&u16>>());
This optimization still applies to fieldless enums with an explicit repr(u*), repr(i*), or
repr(C).

repr(packed)
repr(packed) forces Rust to strip any padding, and only align the type to a byte. This may
improve the memory footprint, but will likely have other negative side-effects.
In particular, most architectures strongly prefer values to be aligned. This may mean the
unaligned loads are penalized (x86), or even fault (some ARM chips). For simple cases like
directly loading or storing a packed field, the compiler might be able to paper over alignment

20
issues with shifts and masks. However if you take a reference to a packed field, it's unlikely
that the compiler will be able to emit code to avoid an unaligned load.
As this can cause undefined behavior, the lint has been implemented and it will become a
hard error.
repr(packed) is not to be used lightly. Unless you have extreme requirements, this should
not be used.
This repr is a modifier on repr(C) and repr(Rust).

repr(align(n))
repr(align(n)) (where n is a power of two) forces the type to have an alignment of at least
n.
This enables several tricks, like making sure neighboring elements of an array never share
the same cache line with each other (which may speed up certain kinds of concurrent code).
This is a modifier on repr(C) and repr(Rust). It is incompatible with repr(packed).

21
Chapter 3

Ownership and Lifetimes

Ownership is the breakout feature of Rust. It allows Rust to be completely memory-safe and
efficient, while avoiding garbage collection. Before getting into the ownership system in
detail, we will consider the motivation of this design.
We will assume that you accept that garbage collection (GC) is not always an optimal solution,
and that it is desirable to manually manage memory in some contexts. If you do not accept
this, might I interest you in a different language?
Regardless of your feelings on GC, it is pretty clearly a massive boon to making code safe. You
never have to worry about things going away too soon (although whether you still wanted to
be pointing at that thing is a different issue...). This is a pervasive problem that C and C++
programs need to deal with. Consider this simple mistake that all of us who have used a
non-GC'd language have made at one point:
fn as_str(data: &u32) -> &str {
// compute the string
let s = format!("{}", data);

// OH NO! We returned a reference to something that

// exists only in this function!
// Dangling pointer! Use after free! Alas!
// (this does not compile in Rust)
&s
}
This is exactly what Rust's ownership system was built to solve. Rust knows the scope in
which the &s lives, and as such can prevent it from escaping. However this is a simple case
that even a C compiler could plausibly catch. Things get more complicated as code gets
bigger and pointers get fed through various functions. Eventually, a C compiler will fall down
and won't be able to perform sufficient escape analysis to prove your code unsound. It will
consequently be forced to accept your program on the assumption that it is correct.
This will never happen to Rust. It's up to the programmer to prove to the compiler that
everything is sound.
Of course, Rust's story around ownership is much more complicated than just verifying that
references don't escape the scope of their referent. That's because ensuring pointers are

22
always valid is much more complicated than this. For instance in this code,
let mut data = vec![1, 2, 3];
// get an internal reference
let x = &data[0];

// OH NO! `push` causes the backing storage of `data` to be reallocated.

// Dangling pointer! Use after free! Alas!
// (this does not compile in Rust)
data.push(4);

println!("{}", x);
naive scope analysis would be insufficient to prevent this bug, because data does in fact live
as long as we needed. However it was changed while we had a reference into it. This is why
Rust requires any references to freeze the referent and its owners.

3.1 References
There are two kinds of reference:
• Shared reference: &
• Mutable reference: &mut
Which obey the following rules:
• A reference cannot outlive its referent
• A mutable reference cannot be aliased
That's it. That's the whole model references follow.
Of course, we should probably define what aliased means.
error[E0425]: cannot find value `aliased` in this scope
--> <rust.rs>:2:20
|
2 | println!("{}", aliased);
| ^^^^^^^ not found in this scope

error: aborting due to previous error

Unfortunately, Rust hasn't actually defined its aliasing model.
While we wait for the Rust devs to specify the semantics of their language, let's use the next
section to discuss what aliasing is in general, and why it matters.

3.2 Aliasing
First off, let's get some important caveats out of the way:
• We will be using the broadest possible definition of aliasing for the sake of discussion.
Rust's definition will probably be more restricted to factor in mutations and liveness.

23
 • We will be assuming a single-threaded, interrupt-free, execution. We will also be ig-
noring things like memory-mapped hardware. Rust assumes these things don't happen
unless you tell it otherwise. For more details, see the Concurrency Chapter.
With that said, here's our working definition: variables and pointers alias if they refer to
overlapping regions of memory.

Why Aliasing Matters

So why should we care about aliasing?
Consider this simple function:
fn compute(input: &u32, output: &mut u32) {
if *input > 10 {
*output = 1;
}
if *input > 5 {
*output *= 2;
}
// remember that `output` will be `2` if `input > 10`
}
We would like to be able to optimize it to the following function:
fn compute(input: &u32, output: &mut u32) {
let cached_input = *input; // keep `*input` in a register
if cached_input > 10 {
// If the input is greater than 10, the previous code would set
↪ the output to 1 and then double it,
// resulting in an output of 2 (because `>10` implies `>5`).
// Here, we avoid the double assignment and just set it directly
↪ to 2.
*output = 2;
} else if cached_input > 5 {
*output *= 2;
}
}
In Rust, this optimization should be sound. For almost any other language, it wouldn't be
(barring global analysis). This is because the optimization relies on knowing that aliasing
doesn't occur, which most languages are fairly liberal with. Specifically, we need to worry
about function arguments that make input and output overlap, such as compute(&x, &mut
x).
With that input, we could get this execution:
// input == output == 0xabad1dea
// *input == *output == 20
if *input > 10 { // true (*input == 20)
*output = 1; // also overwrites *input, because they are the same
}
if *input > 5 { // false (*input == 1)
*output *= 2;

24
}
// *input == *output == 1
Our optimized function would produce *output == 2 for this input, so the correctness of
our optimization relies on this input being impossible.
In Rust we know this input should be impossible because &mut isn't allowed to be aliased. So
we can safely reject its possibility and perform this optimization. In most other languages,
this input would be entirely possible, and must be considered.
This is why alias analysis is important: it lets the compiler perform useful optimizations!
Some examples:
• keeping values in registers by proving no pointers access the value's memory
• eliminating reads by proving some memory hasn't been written to since last we read it
• eliminating writes by proving some memory is never read before the next write to it
• moving or reordering reads and writes by proving they don't depend on each other
These optimizations also tend to prove the soundness of bigger optimizations such as loop
vectorization, constant propagation, and dead code elimination.
In the previous example, we used the fact that &mut u32 can't be aliased to prove that writes
to *output can't possibly affect *input. This lets us cache *input in a register, eliminating
a read.
By caching this read, we knew that the write in the > 10 branch couldn't affect whether we
take the > 5 branch, allowing us to also eliminate a read-modify-write (doubling *output)
when *input > 10.
The key thing to remember about alias analysis is that writes are the primary hazard for
optimizations. That is, the only thing that prevents us from moving a read to any other part
of the program is the possibility of us re-ordering it with a write to the same location.
For instance, we have no concern for aliasing in the following modified version of our function,
because we've moved the only write to *output to the very end of our function. This allows
us to freely reorder the reads of *input that occur before it:
fn compute(input: &u32, output: &mut u32) {
let mut temp = *output;
if *input > 10 {
temp = 1;
}
if *input > 5 {
temp *= 2;
}
*output = temp;
}
We're still relying on alias analysis to assume that input doesn't alias temp, but the proof is
much simpler: the value of a local variable can't be aliased by things that existed before it
was declared. This is an assumption every language freely makes, and so this version of the
function could be optimized the way we want in any language.
This is why the definition of ”alias” that Rust will use likely involves some notion of liveness
and mutation: we don't actually care if aliasing occurs if there aren't any actual writes to
memory happening.

25
Of course, a full aliasing model for Rust must also take into consideration things like func-
tion calls (which may mutate things we don't see), raw pointers (which have no aliasing
requirements on their own), and UnsafeCell (which lets the referent of an & be mutated).

3.3 Lifetimes
Rust enforces these rules through lifetimes. Lifetimes are named regions of code that a
reference must be valid for. Those regions may be fairly complex, as they correspond to paths
of execution in the program. There may even be holes in these paths of execution, as it's
possible to invalidate a reference as long as it's reinitialized before it's used again. Types
which contain references (or pretend to) may also be tagged with lifetimes so that Rust can
prevent them from being invalidated as well.
In most of our examples, the lifetimes will coincide with scopes. This is because our examples
are simple. The more complex cases where they don't coincide are described below.
Within a function body, Rust generally doesn't let you explicitly name the lifetimes involved.
This is because it's generally not really necessary to talk about lifetimes in a local context; Rust
has all the information and can work out everything as optimally as possible. Many anony-
mous scopes and temporaries that you would otherwise have to write are often introduced
to make your code Just Work.
However once you cross the function boundary, you need to start talking about lifetimes.
Lifetimes are denoted with an apostrophe: 'a, 'static. To dip our toes with lifetimes, we're
going to pretend that we're actually allowed to label scopes with lifetimes, and desugar the
examples from the start of this chapter.
Originally, our examples made use of aggressive sugar -- high fructose corn syrup even --
around scopes and lifetimes, because writing everything out explicitly is extremely noisy. All
Rust code relies on aggressive inference and elision of ”obvious” things.
One particularly interesting piece of sugar is that each let statement implicitly introduces a
scope. For the most part, this doesn't really matter. However it does matter for variables that
refer to each other. As a simple example, let's completely desugar this simple piece of Rust
code:
let x = 0;
let y = &x;
let z = &y;
The borrow checker always tries to minimize the extent of a lifetime, so it will likely desugar
to the following:
// NOTE: `'a: {` and `&'b x` is not valid syntax!
'a: {
let x: i32 = 0;
'b: {
// lifetime used is 'b because that's good enough.
let y: &'b i32 = &'b x;
'c: {
// ditto on 'c
let z: &'c &'b i32 = &'c y; // "a reference to a reference
↪ to an i32" (with lifetimes annotated)
}

26
 }
}
Wow. That's... awful. Let's all take a moment to thank Rust for making this easier.
Actually passing references to outer scopes will cause Rust to infer a larger lifetime:
let x = 0;
let z;
let y = &x;
z = y;
'a: {
let x: i32 = 0;
'b: {
let z: &'b i32;
'c: {
// Must use 'b here because the reference to x is
// being passed to the scope 'b.
let y: &'b i32 = &'b x;
z = y;
}
}
}

Example: references that outlive referents

Alright, let's look at some of those examples from before:
fn as_str(data: &u32) -> &str {
let s = format!("{}", data);
&s
}
desugars to:
fn as_str<'a>(data: &'a u32) -> &'a str {
'b: {
let s = format!("{}", data);
return &'a s;
}
}
This signature of as_str takes a reference to a u32 with some lifetime, and promises that
it can produce a reference to a str that can live just as long. Already we can see why this
signature might be trouble. That basically implies that we're going to find a str somewhere in
the scope the reference to the u32 originated in, or somewhere even earlier. That's a bit of a
tall order.
We then proceed to compute the string s, and return a reference to it. Since the contract of
our function says the reference must outlive 'a, that's the lifetime we infer for the reference.
Unfortunately, s was defined in the scope 'b, so the only way this is sound is if 'b contains
'a -- which is clearly false since 'a must contain the function call itself. We have therefore
created a reference whose lifetime outlives its referent, which is literally the first thing we
said that references can't do. The compiler rightfully blows up in our face.

27
To make this more clear, we can expand the example:
fn as_str<'a>(data: &'a u32) -> &'a str {
'b: {
let s = format!("{}", data);
return &'a s
}
}

fn main() {
'c: {
let x: u32 = 0;
'd: {
// An anonymous scope is introduced because the borrow does
↪ not
// need to last for the whole scope x is valid for. The
↪ return
// of as_str must find a str somewhere before this function
// call. Obviously not happening.
println!("{}", as_str::<'d>(&'d x));
}
}
}
Shoot!
Of course, the right way to write this function is as follows:
fn to_string(data: &u32) -> String {
format!("{}", data)
}
We must produce an owned value inside the function to return it! The only way we could
have returned an &'a str would have been if it was in a field of the &'a u32, which is
obviously not the case.
(Actually we could have also just returned a string literal, which as a global can be considered
to reside at the bottom of the stack; though this limits our implementation just a bit.)

Example: aliasing a mutable reference

How about the other example:
let mut data = vec![1, 2, 3];
let x = &data[0];
data.push(4);
println!("{}", x);
'a: {
let mut data: Vec<i32> = vec![1, 2, 3];
'b: {
// 'b is as big as we need this borrow to be
// (just need to get to `println!`)
let x: &'b i32 = Index::index::<'b>(&'b data, 0);
'c: {

28
 // Temporary scope because we don't need the
// &mut to last any longer.
Vec::push(&'c mut data, 4);
}
println!("{}", x);
}
}
The problem here is a bit more subtle and interesting. We want Rust to reject this program
for the following reason: We have a live shared reference x to a descendant of data when
we try to take a mutable reference to data to push. This would create an aliased mutable
reference, which would violate the second rule of references.
However this is not at all how Rust reasons that this program is bad. Rust doesn't understand
that x is a reference to a subpath of data. It doesn't understand Vec at all. What it does see is
that x has to live for 'b in order to be printed. The signature of Index::index subsequently
demands that the reference we take to data has to survive for 'b. When we try to call push,
it then sees us try to make an &'c mut data. Rust knows that 'c is contained within 'b, and
rejects our program because the &'b data must still be alive!
Here we see that the lifetime system is much more coarse than the reference semantics we're
actually interested in preserving. For the most part, that's totally ok, because it keeps us from
spending all day explaining our program to the compiler. However it does mean that several
programs that are totally correct with respect to Rust's true semantics are rejected because
lifetimes are too dumb.

The area covered by a lifetime

A reference (sometimes called a borrow) is alive from the place it is created to its last use. The
borrowed value needs to outlive only borrows that are alive. This looks simple, but there are
a few subtleties.
The following snippet compiles, because after printing x, it is no longer needed, so it doesn't
matter if it is dangling or aliased (even though the variable x technically exists to the very
end of the scope).
let mut data = vec![1, 2, 3];
let x = &data[0];
println!("{}", x);
// This is OK, x is no longer needed
data.push(4);
However, if the value has a destructor, the destructor is run at the end of the scope. And
running the destructor is considered a use ‒ obviously the last one. So, this will not compile.
struct X<'a>(&'a i32);

impl Drop for X<'_> {

fn drop(&mut self) {}
}

let mut data = vec![1, 2, 3];

let x = X(&data[0]);
println!("{:?}", x);

29
data.push(4);
// Here, the destructor is run and therefore this'll fail to compile.
One way to convince the compiler that x is no longer valid is by using drop(x) before
data.push(4).
Furthermore, there might be multiple possible last uses of the borrow, for example in each
branch of a condition.
let mut data = vec![1, 2, 3];
let x = &data[0];

if some_condition() {
println!("{}", x); // This is the last use of `x` in this branch
data.push(4); // So we can push here
} else {
// There's no use of `x` in here, so effectively the last use is the
// creation of x at the top of the example.
data.push(5);
}
And a lifetime can have a pause in it. Or you might look at it as two distinct borrows just
being tied to the same local variable. This often happens around loops (writing a new value of
a variable at the end of the loop and using it for the last time at the top of the next iteration).
let mut data = vec![1, 2, 3];
// This mut allows us to change where the reference points to
let mut x = &data[0];

println!("{}", x); // Last use of this borrow

data.push(4);
x = &data[3]; // We start a new borrow here
println!("{}", x);
Historically, Rust kept the borrow alive until the end of scope, so these examples might fail
to compile with older compilers. Also, there are still some corner cases where Rust fails to
properly shorten the live part of the borrow and fails to compile even when it looks like it
should. These'll be solved over time.

3.4 Limits of Lifetimes

Given the following code:
struct Foo;

impl Foo {
fn mutate_and_share(&mut self) -> &Self { &*self }
fn share(&self) {}
}

fn main() {
let mut foo = Foo;
let loan = foo.mutate_and_share();

30
 foo.share();
println!("{:?}", loan);
}
One might expect it to compile. We call mutate_and_share, which mutably borrows foo tem-
porarily, but then returns only a shared reference. Therefore we would expect foo.share()
to succeed as foo shouldn't be mutably borrowed.
However when we try to compile it:
error[E0502]: cannot borrow `foo` as immutable because it is also
↪ borrowed as mutable
--> src/main.rs:12:5
|
11 | let loan = foo.mutate_and_share();
| --- mutable borrow occurs here
12 | foo.share();
| ^^^ immutable borrow occurs here
13 | println!("{:?}", loan);
What happened? Well, we got the exact same reasoning as we did for Example 2 in the
previous section. We desugar the program and we get the following:
struct Foo;

impl Foo {
fn mutate_and_share<'a>(&'a mut self) -> &'a Self { &'a *self }
fn share<'a>(&'a self) {}
}

fn main() {
'b: {
let mut foo: Foo = Foo;
'c: {
let loan: &'c Foo = Foo::mutate_and_share::<'c>(&'c mut
↪ foo);
'd: {
Foo::share::<'d>(&'d foo);
}
println!("{:?}", loan);
}
}
}
The lifetime system is forced to extend the &mut foo to have lifetime 'c, due to the lifetime
of loan and mutate_and_share's signature. Then when we try to call share, it sees we're
trying to alias that &'c mut foo and blows up in our face!
This program is clearly correct according to the reference semantics we actually care about,
but the lifetime system is too coarse-grained to handle that.

31
Improperly reduced borrows
The following code fails to compile, because Rust sees that a variable, map, is borrowed twice,
and can not infer that the first borrow ceases to be needed before the second one occurs. This
is caused by Rust conservatively falling back to using a whole scope for the first borrow. This
will eventually get fixed.
fn get_default<'m, K, V>(map: &'m mut HashMap<K, V>, key: K) -> &'m mut
↪ V
where
K: Clone + Eq + Hash,
V: Default,
{
match map.get_mut(&key) {
Some(value) => value,
None => {
map.insert(key.clone(), V::default());
map.get_mut(&key).unwrap()
}
}
}
Because of the lifetime restrictions imposed, &mut map's lifetime overlaps other mutable
borrows, resulting in a compile error:
error[E0499]: cannot borrow `*map` as mutable more than once at a time
--> src/main.rs:12:13
|
4 | fn get_default<'m, K, V>(map: &'m mut HashMap<K, V>, key: K) ->
↪ &'m mut V
| -- lifetime `'m` defined here
...
9 | match map.get_mut(&key) {
| - --- first mutable borrow occurs here
| _____|
| |
10 | | Some(value) => value,
11 | | None => {
12 | | map.insert(key.clone(), V::default());
| | ^^^ second mutable borrow occurs here
13 | | map.get_mut(&key).unwrap()
14 | | }
15 | | }
| |_____- returning this value requires that `*map` is borrowed for
↪ `'m`

3.5 Lifetime Elision

In order to make common patterns more ergonomic, Rust allows lifetimes to be elided in
function signatures.
A lifetime position is anywhere you can write a lifetime in a type:

32
&'a T
&'a mut T
T<'a>
Lifetime positions can appear as either ”input” or ”output”:
• For fn definitions, fn types, and the traits Fn, FnMut, and FnOnce, input refers to the
types of the formal arguments, while output refers to result types. So fn foo(s: &str)
-> (&str, &str) has elided one lifetime in input position and two lifetimes in output
position. Note that the input positions of a fn method definition do not include the
lifetimes that occur in the method's impl header (nor lifetimes that occur in the trait
header, for a default method).
• For impl headers, all types are input. So impl Trait<&T> for Struct<&T> has elided
two lifetimes in input position, while impl Struct<&T> has elided one.
Elision rules are as follows:
• Each elided lifetime in input position becomes a distinct lifetime parameter.
• If there is exactly one input lifetime position (elided or not), that lifetime is assigned to
all elided output lifetimes.
• If there are multiple input lifetime positions, but one of them is &self or &mut self,
the lifetime of self is assigned to all elided output lifetimes.
• Otherwise, it is an error to elide an output lifetime.
Examples:
fn print(s: &str); // elided
fn print<'a>(s: &'a str); // expanded

fn debug(lvl: usize, s: &str); // elided

fn debug<'a>(lvl: usize, s: &'a str); // expanded

fn substr(s: &str, until: usize) -> &str; // elided

fn substr<'a>(s: &'a str, until: usize) -> &'a str; // expanded

fn get_str() -> &str; // ILLEGAL

fn frob(s: &str, t: &str) -> &str; // ILLEGAL

fn get_mut(&mut self) -> &mut T; // elided

fn get_mut<'a>(&'a mut self) -> &'a mut T; // expanded

fn args<T: ToCStr>(&mut self, args: &[T]) -> &mut Command

↪ // elided
fn args<'a, 'b, T: ToCStr>(&'a mut self, args: &'b [T]) -> &'a mut
↪ Command // expanded

fn new(buf: &mut [u8]) -> BufWriter; // elided

fn new(buf: &mut [u8]) -> BufWriter<'_>; // elided (with
↪ `rust_2018_idioms`)
fn new<'a>(buf: &'a mut [u8]) -> BufWriter<'a> // expanded

33
3.6 Unbounded Lifetimes
Unsafe code can often end up producing references or lifetimes out of thin air. Such lifetimes
come into the world as unbounded. The most common source of this is taking a reference to a
dereferenced raw pointer, which produces a reference with an unbounded lifetime. Such
a lifetime becomes as big as context demands. This is in fact more powerful than simply
becoming 'static, because for instance &'static &'a T will fail to typecheck, but the
unbound lifetime will perfectly mold into &'a &'a T as needed. However for most intents
and purposes, such an unbounded lifetime can be regarded as 'static.
Almost no reference is 'static, so this is probably wrong. transmute and transmute_copy
are the two other primary offenders. One should endeavor to bound an unbounded lifetime
as quickly as possible, especially across function boundaries.
Given a function, any output lifetimes that don't derive from inputs are unbounded. For
instance:
fn get_str<'a>(s: *const String) -> &'a str {
unsafe { &*s }
}

fn main() {
let soon_dropped = String::from("hello");
let dangling = get_str(&soon_dropped);
drop(soon_dropped);
println!("Invalid str: {}", dangling); // Invalid str: gӚ_`
}
The easiest way to avoid unbounded lifetimes is to use lifetime elision at the function boundary.
If an output lifetime is elided, then it must be bounded by an input lifetime. Of course it might
be bounded by the wrong lifetime, but this will usually just cause a compiler error, rather
than allow memory safety to be trivially violated.
Within a function, bounding lifetimes is more error-prone. The safest and easiest way to
bound a lifetime is to return it from a function with a bound lifetime. However if this is
unacceptable, the reference can be placed in a location with a specific lifetime. Unfortunately
it's impossible to name all lifetimes involved in a function.

3.7 Higher-Rank Trait Bounds (HRTBs)

Rust's Fn traits are a little bit magic. For instance, we can write the following code:
struct Closure<F> {
data: (u8, u16),
func: F,
}

impl<F> Closure<F>
where F: Fn(&(u8, u16)) -> &u8,
{
fn call(&self) -> &u8 {
(self.func)(&self.data)
}

34
}

fn do_it(data: &(u8, u16)) -> &u8 { &data.0 }

fn main() {
let clo = Closure { data: (0, 1), func: do_it };
println!("{}", clo.call());
}
If we try to naively desugar this code in the same way that we did in the lifetimes section, we
run into some trouble:
// NOTE: `&'b data.0` and `'x: {` is not valid syntax!
struct Closure<F> {
data: (u8, u16),
func: F,
}

impl<F> Closure<F>
// where F: Fn(&'??? (u8, u16)) -> &'??? u8,
{
fn call<'a>(&'a self) -> &'a u8 {
(self.func)(&self.data)
}
}

fn do_it<'b>(data: &'b (u8, u16)) -> &'b u8 { &'b data.0 }

fn main() {
'x: {
let clo = Closure { data: (0, 1), func: do_it };
println!("{}", clo.call());
}
}
How on earth are we supposed to express the lifetimes on F's trait bound? We need to provide
some lifetime there, but the lifetime we care about can't be named until we enter the body of
call! Also, that isn't some fixed lifetime; call works with any lifetime &self happens to
have at that point.
This job requires The Magic of Higher-Rank Trait Bounds (HRTBs). The way we desugar this
is as follows:
where for<'a> F: Fn(&'a (u8, u16)) -> &'a u8,
Alternatively:
where F: for<'a> Fn(&'a (u8, u16)) -> &'a u8,
(Where Fn(a, b, c) -> d is itself just sugar for the unstable real Fn trait)
for<'a> can be read as ”for all choices of 'a”, and basically produces an infinite list of trait
bounds that F must satisfy. Intense. There aren't many places outside of the Fn traits where
we encounter HRTBs, and even for those we have a nice magic sugar for the common cases.
In summary, we can rewrite the original code more explicitly as:

35
struct Closure<F> {
data: (u8, u16),
func: F,
}

impl<F> Closure<F>
where for<'a> F: Fn(&'a (u8, u16)) -> &'a u8,
{
fn call(&self) -> &u8 {
(self.func)(&self.data)
}
}

fn do_it(data: &(u8, u16)) -> &u8 { &data.0 }

fn main() {
let clo = Closure { data: (0, 1), func: do_it };
println!("{}", clo.call());
}

3.8 Subtyping and Variance

Rust uses lifetimes to track the relationships between borrows and ownership. However,
a naive implementation of lifetimes would be either too restrictive, or permit undefined
behavior.
In order to allow flexible usage of lifetimes while also preventing their misuse, Rust uses
subtyping and variance.
Let's start with an example.
// Note: debug expects two parameters with the *same* lifetime
fn debug<'a>(a: &'a str, b: &'a str) {
println!("a = {a:?} b = {b:?}");
}

fn main() {
let hello: &'static str = "hello";
{
let world = String::from("world");
let world = &world; // 'world has a shorter lifetime than
↪ 'static
debug(hello, world);
}
}
In a conservative implementation of lifetimes, since hello and world have different lifetimes,
we might see the following error:
error[E0308]: mismatched types
--> src/main.rs:10:16
|

36
10 | debug(hello, world);
| ^
| |
| expected `&'static str`, found struct `&'world
↪ str`
This would be rather unfortunate. In this case, what we want is to accept any type that lives
at least as long as 'world. Let's try using subtyping with our lifetimes.

Subtyping
Subtyping is the idea that one type can be used in place of another.
Let's define that Sub is a subtype of Super (we'll be using the notation Sub <: Super through-
out this chapter).
What this is suggesting to us is that the set of requirements that Super defines are completely
satisfied by Sub. Sub may then have more requirements.
Now, in order to use subtyping with lifetimes, we need to define the requirement of a lifetime:
'a defines a region of code.
Now that we have a defined set of requirements for lifetimes, we can define how they relate
to each other:
'long <: 'short if and only if 'long defines a region of code that completely
contains 'short.
'long may define a region larger than 'short, but that still fits our definition.
As we will see throughout the rest of this chapter, subtyping is a lot more compli-
cated and subtle than this, but this simple rule is a very good 99% intuition. And
unless you write unsafe code, the compiler will automatically handle all the corner
cases for you.
But this is the Rustonomicon. We're writing unsafe code, so we need to understand
how this stuff really works, and how we can mess it up.
Going back to our example above, we can say that 'static <: 'world. For now, let's also
accept the idea that subtypes of lifetimes can be passed through references (more on this
in Variance), e.g. &'static str is a subtype of &'world str, then we can ”downgrade”
&'static str into a &'world str. With that, the example above will compile:
fn debug<'a>(a: &'a str, b: &'a str) {
println!("a = {a:?} b = {b:?}");
}

fn main() {
let hello: &'static str = "hello";
{
let world = String::from("world");
let world = &world; // 'world has a shorter lifetime than
↪ 'static
debug(hello, world); // hello silently downgrades from `&'static
↪ str` into `&'world str`

37
 }
}

Variance
Above, we glossed over the fact that 'static <: 'b implied that &'static T <: &'b T.
This uses a property known as variance. It's not always as simple as this example, though. To
understand that, let's try to extend this example a bit:
fn assign<T>(input: &mut T, val: T) {
*input = val;
}

fn main() {
let mut hello: &'static str = "hello";
{
let world = String::from("world");
assign(&mut hello, &world);
}
println!("{hello}"); // use after free
}
In assign, we are setting the hello reference to point to world. But then world goes out of
scope, before the later use of hello in the println!
This is a classic use-after-free bug!
Our first instinct might be to blame the assign impl, but there's really nothing wrong here.
It shouldn't be surprising that we might want to assign a T into a T.
The problem is that we cannot assume that &mut &'static str and &mut &'b str are
compatible. This means that &mut &'static str cannot be a subtype of &mut &'b str,
even if 'static is a subtype of 'b.
Variance is the concept that Rust borrows to define relationships about subtypes through
their generic parameters.
NOTE: For convenience we will define a generic type F<T> so that we can easily
talk about T. Hopefully this is clear in context.
The type F's variance is how the subtyping of its inputs affects the subtyping of its outputs.
There are three kinds of variance in Rust. Given two types Sub and Super, where Sub is a
subtype of Super:
• F is covariant if F<Sub> is a subtype of F<Super> (the subtype property is passed
through)
• F is contravariant if F<Super> is a subtype of F<Sub> (the subtype property is ”in-
verted”)
• F is invariant otherwise (no subtyping relationship exists)
If we remember from the above examples, it was ok for us to treat &'a T as a subtype of &'b
T if 'a <: 'b, therefore we can say that &'a T is covariant over 'a.
Also, we saw that it was not ok for us to treat &mut &'a U as a subtype of &mut &'b U,
therefore we can say that &mut T is invariant over T
Here is a table of some other generic types and their variances:

38
||'a|T|U| |--|::|:|:| |&'a T |covariant|covariant|| |&'a mut T|covariant|invariant||
|Box<T>||covariant|| |Vec<T>||covariant|| |UnsafeCell<T>||invariant|| |Cell<T>||invariant||
|fn(T) -> U||contravariant|covariant| |*const T||covariant|| |*mut T||invariant||
Some of these can be explained simply in relation to the others:
• Vec<T> and all other owning pointers and collections follow the same logic as Box<T>
• Cell<T> and all other interior mutability types follow the same logic as UnsafeCell<T>
• UnsafeCell<T> having interior mutability gives it the same variance properties as
&mut T
• *const T follows the logic of &T
• *mut T follows the logic of &mut T (or UnsafeCell<T>)
For more types, see the ”Variance” section on the reference.
NOTE: the only source of contravariance in the language is the arguments to
a function, which is why it really doesn't come up much in practice. Invoking
contravariance involves higher-order programming with function pointers that
take references with specific lifetimes (as opposed to the usual ”any lifetime”,
which gets into higher rank lifetimes, which work independently of subtyping).
Now that we have some more formal understanding of variance, let's go through some more
examples in more detail.
fn assign<T>(input: &mut T, val: T) {
*input = val;
}

fn main() {
let mut hello: &'static str = "hello";
{
let world = String::from("world");
assign(&mut hello, &world);
}
println!("{hello}");
}
And what do we get when we run this?
error[E0597]: `world` does not live long enough
--> src/main.rs:9:28
|
6 | let mut hello: &'static str = "hello";
| ------------ type annotation requires that
↪ `world` is borrowed for `'static`
...
9 | assign(&mut hello, &world);
| ^^^^^^ borrowed value does not live long
↪ enough
10 | }
| - `world` dropped here while still borrowed
Good, it doesn't compile! Let's break down what's happening here in detail.
First let's look at the assign function:

39
fn assign<T>(input: &mut T, val: T) {
*input = val;
}
All it does is take a mutable reference and a value and overwrite the referent with it. What's
important about this function is that it creates a type equality constraint. It clearly says in its
signature the referent and the value must be the exact same type.
Meanwhile, in the caller we pass in &mut &'static str and &'world str.
Because &mut T is invariant over T, the compiler concludes it can't apply any subtyping to
the first argument, and so T must be exactly &'static str.
This is counter to the &T case:
fn debug<T: std::fmt::Debug>(a: T, b: T) {
println!("a = {a:?} b = {b:?}");
}
where similarly a and b must have the same type T. But since &'a T is covariant over 'a, we
are allowed to perform subtyping. So the compiler decides that &'static str can become
&'b str if and only if &'static str is a subtype of &'b str, which will hold if 'static
<: 'b. This is true, so the compiler is happy to continue compiling this code.
As it turns out, the argument for why it's ok for Box (and Vec, HashMap, etc.) to be covariant
is pretty similar to the argument for why it's ok for lifetimes to be covariant: as soon as you
try to stuff them in something like a mutable reference, they inherit invariance and you're
prevented from doing anything bad.
However Box makes it easier to focus on the by-value aspect of references that we partially
glossed over.
Unlike a lot of languages which allow values to be freely aliased at all times, Rust has a very
strict rule: if you're allowed to mutate or move a value, you are guaranteed to be the only
one with access to it.
Consider the following code:
let hello: Box<&'static str> = Box::new("hello");

let mut world: Box<&'b str>;

world = hello;
There is no problem at all with the fact that we have forgotten that hello was alive for
'static, because as soon as we moved hello to a variable that only knew it was alive for
'b, we destroyed the only thing in the universe that remembered it lived for longer!
Only one thing left to explain: function pointers.
To see why fn(T) -> U should be covariant over U, consider the following signature:
fn get_str() -> &'a str;
This function claims to produce a str bound by some lifetime 'a. As such, it is perfectly valid
to provide a function with the following signature instead:
fn get_static() -> &'static str;
So when the function is called, all it's expecting is a &str which lives at least the lifetime of
'a, it doesn't matter if the value actually lives longer.

40
However, the same logic does not apply to arguments. Consider trying to satisfy:
fn store_ref(&'a str);
with:
fn store_static(&'static str);
The first function can accept any string reference as long as it lives at least for 'a, but the
second cannot accept a string reference that lives for any duration less than 'static, which
would cause a conflict. Covariance doesn't work here. But if we flip it around, it actually does
work! If we need a function that can handle &'static str, a function that can handle any
reference lifetime will surely work fine.
Let's see this in practice
thread_local! {
pub static StaticVecs: RefCell<Vec<&'static str>> =
↪ RefCell::new(Vec::new());
}

/// saves the input given into a thread local `Vec<&'static str>`
fn store(input: &'static str) {
StaticVecs.with_borrow_mut(|v| v.push(input));
}

/// Calls the function with it's input (must have the same lifetime!)
fn demo<'a>(input: &'a str, f: fn(&'a str)) {
f(input);
}

fn main() {
demo("hello", store); // "hello" is 'static. Can call `store` fine

{
let smuggle = String::from("smuggle");

// `&smuggle` is not static. If we were to call `store` with

↪ `&smuggle`,
// we would have pushed an invalid lifetime into the
↪ `StaticVecs`.
// Therefore, `fn(&'static str)` cannot be a subtype of `fn(&'a
↪ str)`
demo(&smuggle, store);
}

// use after free

StaticVecs.with_borrow(|v| println!("{v:?}"));
}
And that's why function types, unlike anything else in the language, are contravariant over
their arguments.
Now, this is all well and good for the types the standard library provides, but how is variance
determined for types that you define? A struct, informally speaking, inherits the variance of

41
its fields. If a struct MyType has a generic argument A that is used in a field a, then MyType's
variance over A is exactly a's variance over A.
However if A is used in multiple fields:
• If all uses of A are covariant, then MyType is covariant over A
• If all uses of A are contravariant, then MyType is contravariant over A
• Otherwise, MyType is invariant over A
use std::cell::Cell;

struct MyType<'a, 'b, A: 'a, B: 'b, C, D, E, F, G, H, In, Out, Mixed> {

a: &'a A, // covariant over 'a and A
b: &'b mut B, // covariant over 'b and invariant over B

c: *const C, // covariant over C

d: *mut D, // invariant over D

e: E, // covariant over E
f: Vec<F>, // covariant over F
g: Cell<G>, // invariant over G

h1: H, // would also be covariant over H except...

h2: Cell<H>, // invariant over H, because invariance wins all
↪ conflicts

i: fn(In) -> Out, // contravariant over In, covariant over Out

k1: fn(Mixed) -> usize, // would be contravariant over Mixed

↪ except..
k2: Mixed, // invariant over Mixed, because invariance
↪ wins all conflicts
}

3.9 Drop Check

We have seen how lifetimes provide us some fairly simple rules for ensuring that we never
read dangling references. However up to this point we have only ever interacted with the
outlives relationship in an inclusive manner. That is, when we talked about 'a: 'b, it was ok
for 'a to live exactly as long as 'b. At first glance, this seems to be a meaningless distinction.
Nothing ever gets dropped at the same time as another, right? This is why we used the
following desugaring of let statements:
let x;
let y;
desugaring to:
{
let x;
{
let y;

42
 }
}
There are some more complex situations which are not possible to desugar using scopes, but
the order is still defined ‒ variables are dropped in the reverse order of their definition, fields
of structs and tuples in order of their definition. There are some more details about order of
drop in RFC 1857.
Let's do this:
let tuple = (vec![], vec![]);
The left vector is dropped first. But does it mean the right one strictly outlives it in the eyes
of the borrow checker? The answer to this question is no. The borrow checker could track
fields of tuples separately, but it would still be unable to decide what outlives what in case
of vector elements, which are dropped manually via pure-library code the borrow checker
doesn't understand.
So why do we care? We care because if the type system isn't careful, it could accidentally
make dangling pointers. Consider the following simple program:
struct Inspector<'a>(&'a u8);

struct World<'a> {
inspector: Option<Inspector<'a>>,
days: Box<u8>,
}

fn main() {
let mut world = World {
inspector: None,
days: Box::new(1),
};
world.inspector = Some(Inspector(&world.days));
}
This program is totally sound and compiles today. The fact that days does not strictly outlive
inspector doesn't matter. As long as the inspector is alive, so is days.
However if we add a destructor, the program will no longer compile!
struct Inspector<'a>(&'a u8);

impl<'a> Drop for Inspector<'a> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
println!("I was only {} days from retirement!", self.0);
}
}

struct World<'a> {
inspector: Option<Inspector<'a>>,
days: Box<u8>,
}

fn main() {

43
 let mut world = World {
inspector: None,
days: Box::new(1),
};
world.inspector = Some(Inspector(&world.days));
// Let's say `days` happens to get dropped first.
// Then when Inspector is dropped, it will try to read free'd
↪ memory!
}
error[E0597]: `world.days` does not live long enough
--> src/main.rs:19:38
|
19 | world.inspector = Some(Inspector(&world.days));
| ^^^^^^^^^^^ borrowed value
↪ does not live long enough
...
22 | }
| -
| |
| `world.days` dropped here while still borrowed
| borrow might be used here, when `world` is dropped and runs the
↪ destructor for type `World<'_>`
You can try changing the order of fields or use a tuple instead of the struct, it'll still not
compile.
Implementing Drop lets the Inspector execute some arbitrary code during its death. This
means it can potentially observe that types that are supposed to live as long as it does actually
were destroyed first.
Interestingly, only generic types need to worry about this. If they aren't generic, then the only
lifetimes they can harbor are 'static, which will truly live forever. This is why this problem
is referred to as sound generic drop. Sound generic drop is enforced by the drop checker. As of
this writing, some of the finer details of how the drop checker (also called dropck) validates
types is totally up in the air. However The Big Rule is the subtlety that we have focused on
this whole section:
For a generic type to soundly implement drop, its generics arguments must strictly
outlive it.
Obeying this rule is (usually) necessary to satisfy the borrow checker; obeying it is sufficient
but not necessary to be sound. That is, if your type obeys this rule then it's definitely sound
to drop.
The reason that it is not always necessary to satisfy the above rule is that some Drop imple-
mentations will not access borrowed data even though their type gives them the capability
for such access, or because we know the specific drop order and the borrowed data is still
fine even if the borrow checker doesn't know that.
For example, this variant of the above Inspector example will never access borrowed data:
struct Inspector<'a>(&'a u8, &'static str);

impl<'a> Drop for Inspector<'a> {

44
 fn drop(&mut self) {
println!("Inspector(_, {}) knows when *not* to inspect.",
↪ self.1);
}
}

struct World<'a> {
inspector: Option<Inspector<'a>>,
days: Box<u8>,
}

fn main() {
let mut world = World {
inspector: None,
days: Box::new(1),
};
world.inspector = Some(Inspector(&world.days, "gadget"));
// Let's say `days` happens to get dropped first.
// Even when Inspector is dropped, its destructor will not access
↪ the
// borrowed `days`.
}
Likewise, this variant will also never access borrowed data:
struct Inspector<T>(T, &'static str);

impl<T> Drop for Inspector<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
println!("Inspector(_, {}) knows when *not* to inspect.",
↪ self.1);
}
}

struct World<T> {
inspector: Option<Inspector<T>>,
days: Box<u8>,
}

fn main() {
let mut world = World {
inspector: None,
days: Box::new(1),
};
world.inspector = Some(Inspector(&world.days, "gadget"));
// Let's say `days` happens to get dropped first.
// Even when Inspector is dropped, its destructor will not access
↪ the
// borrowed `days`.
}
However, both of the above variants are rejected by the borrow checker during the analysis

45
of fn main, saying that days does not live long enough.
The reason is that the borrow checking analysis of main does not know about the internals
of each Inspector's Drop implementation. As far as the borrow checker knows while it is
analyzing main, the body of an inspector's destructor might access that borrowed data.
Therefore, the drop checker forces all borrowed data in a value to strictly outlive that value.

An Escape Hatch
The precise rules that govern drop checking may be less restrictive in the future.
The current analysis is deliberately conservative and trivial; it forces all borrowed data in a
value to outlive that value, which is certainly sound.
Future versions of the language may make the analysis more precise, to reduce the number
of cases where sound code is rejected as unsafe. This would help address cases such as the
two Inspectors above that know not to inspect during destruction.
In the meantime, there is an unstable attribute that one can use to assert (unsafely) that a
generic type's destructor is guaranteed to not access any expired data, even if its type gives it
the capability to do so.
That attribute is called may_dangle and was introduced in RFC 1327. To deploy it on the
Inspector from above, we would write:

struct Inspector<'a>(&'a u8, &'static str);

unsafe impl<#[may_dangle] 'a> Drop for Inspector<'a> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
println!("Inspector(_, {}) knows when *not* to inspect.",
↪ self.1);
}
}

struct World<'a> {
days: Box<u8>,
inspector: Option<Inspector<'a>>,
}

fn main() {
let mut world = World {
inspector: None,
days: Box::new(1),
};
world.inspector = Some(Inspector(&world.days, "gadget"));
}
Use of this attribute requires the Drop impl to be marked unsafe because the compiler is
not checking the implicit assertion that no potentially expired data (e.g. self.0 above) is
accessed.
The attribute can be applied to any number of lifetime and type parameters. In the following
example, we assert that we access no data behind a reference of lifetime 'b and that the only

46
uses of T will be moves or drops, but omit the attribute from 'a and U, because we do access
data with that lifetime and that type:
use std::fmt::Display;

struct Inspector<'a, 'b, T, U: Display>(&'a u8, &'b u8, T, U);

unsafe impl<'a, #[may_dangle] 'b, #[may_dangle] T, U: Display> Drop for

↪ Inspector<'a, 'b, T, U> {
fn drop(&mut self) {
println!("Inspector({}, _, _, {})", self.0, self.3);
}
}
It is sometimes obvious that no such access can occur, like the case above. However, when
dealing with a generic type parameter, such access can occur indirectly. Examples of such
indirect access are:
• invoking a callback,
• via a trait method call.
(Future changes to the language, such as impl specialization, may add other avenues for such
indirect access.)
Here is an example of invoking a callback:
struct Inspector<T>(T, &'static str, Box<for <'r> fn(&'r T) -> String>);

impl<T> Drop for Inspector<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
// The `self.2` call could access a borrow e.g. if `T` is `&'a
↪ _`.
println!("Inspector({}, {}) unwittingly inspects expired data.",
(self.2)(&self.0), self.1);
}
}
Here is an example of a trait method call:
use std::fmt;

struct Inspector<T: fmt::Display>(T, &'static str);

impl<T: fmt::Display> Drop for Inspector<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
// There is a hidden call to `<T as Display>::fmt` below, which
// could access a borrow e.g. if `T` is `&'a _`
println!("Inspector({}, {}) unwittingly inspects expired data.",
self.0, self.1);
}
}
And of course, all of these accesses could be further hidden within some other method invoked
by the destructor, rather than being written directly within it.
In all of the above cases where the &'a u8 is accessed in the destructor, adding the

47
#[may_dangle] attribute makes the type vulnerable to misuse that the borrow checker will
not catch, inviting havoc. It is better to avoid adding the attribute.

A related side note about drop order

While the drop order of fields inside a struct is defined, relying on it is fragile and subtle.
When the order matters, it is better to use the ManuallyDrop wrapper.

Is that all about drop checker?

It turns out that when writing unsafe code, we generally don't need to worry at all about
doing the right thing for the drop checker. However there is one special case that you need to
worry about, which we will look at in the next section.

3.10 PhantomData
When working with unsafe code, we can often end up in a situation where types or lifetimes
are logically associated with a struct, but not actually part of a field. This most commonly
occurs with lifetimes. For instance, the Iter for &'a [T] is (approximately) defined as
follows:
struct Iter<'a, T: 'a> {
ptr: *const T,
end: *const T,
}
However because 'a is unused within the struct's body, it's unbounded. Because of the troubles
this has historically caused, unbounded lifetimes and types are forbidden in struct definitions.
Therefore we must somehow refer to these types in the body. Correctly doing this is necessary
to have correct variance and drop checking.
We do this using PhantomData, which is a special marker type. PhantomData consumes no
space, but simulates a field of the given type for the purpose of static analysis. This was
deemed to be less error-prone than explicitly telling the type-system the kind of variance that
you want, while also providing other useful things such as auto traits and the information
needed by drop check.
Iter logically contains a bunch of &'a Ts, so this is exactly what we tell the PhantomData to
simulate:
use std::marker;

struct Iter<'a, T: 'a> {

ptr: *const T,
end: *const T,
_marker: marker::PhantomData<&'a T>,
}
and that's it. The lifetime will be bounded, and your iterator will be covariant over 'a and T.
Everything Just Works.

48
Generic parameters and drop-checking
In the past, there used to be another thing to take into consideration.
This very documentation used to say:
Another important example is Vec, which is (approximately) defined as follows:
struct Vec<T> {
data: *const T, // *const for variance!
len: usize,
cap: usize,
}
Unlike the previous example, it appears that everything is exactly as we want.
Every generic argument to Vec shows up in at least one field. Good to go!
Nope.
The drop checker will generously determine that Vec<T> does not own any values
of type T. This will in turn make it conclude that it doesn't need to worry about Vec
dropping any T's in its destructor for determining drop check soundness. This will
in turn allow people to create unsoundness using Vec's destructor.
In order to tell the drop checker that we do own values of type T, and therefore may
drop some T's when we drop, we must add an extra PhantomData saying exactly
that:
use std::marker;

struct Vec<T> {
data: *const T, // *const for variance!
len: usize,
cap: usize,
_owns_T: marker::PhantomData<T>,
}
But ever since RFC 1238, this is no longer true nor necessary.
If you were to write:
struct Vec<T> {
data: *const T, // `*const` for variance!
len: usize,
cap: usize,
}

impl<T> Drop for Vec<T> { /* … */ }

then the existence of that impl<T> Drop for Vec<T> makes it so Rust will consider that
that Vec<T> owns values of type T (more precisely: may use values of type T in its Drop
implementation), and Rust will thus not allow them to dangle should a Vec<T> be dropped.
When a type already has a Drop impl, adding an extra _owns_T: PhantomData<T> field
is thus superfluous and accomplishes nothing, dropck-wise (it still affects variance and
auto-traits).

49
 • (advanced edge case: if the type containing the PhantomData has no Drop impl
at all, but still has drop glue (by having another field with drop glue), then the
dropck/#[may_dangle] considerations mentioned herein do apply as well: a
PhantomData<T> field will then require T to be droppable whenever the containing
type goes out of scope).

But this situation can sometimes lead to overly restrictive code. That's why the standard
library uses an unstable and unsafe attribute to opt back into the old ”unchecked” drop-
checking behavior, that this very documentation warned about: the #[may_dangle] at-
tribute.

An exception: the special case of the standard library and its unstable #[may_dangle]

This section can be skipped if you are only writing your own library code; but if you are
curious about what the standard library does with the actual Vec definition, you'll notice that
it still needs to use a _owns_T: PhantomData<T> field for soundness.
Consider the following example:
fn main() {
let mut v: Vec<&str> = Vec::new();
let s: String = "Short-lived".into();
v.push(&s);
drop(s);
} // <- `v` is dropped here
with a classical impl<T> Drop for Vec<T> { definition, the above is denied.
Indeed, in this case we have a Vec</* T = */ &'s str> vector of 's-lived references to
strings, but in the case of let s: String, it is dropped before the Vec is, and thus 's is
expired by the time the Vec is dropped, and the impl<'s> Drop for Vec<&'s str> { is
used.
This means that if such Drop were to be used, it would be dealing with an expired, or dangling
lifetime 's. But this is contrary to Rust principles, where by default all Rust references
involved in a function signature are non-dangling and valid to dereference.
Hence why Rust has to conservatively deny this snippet.
And yet, in the case of the real Vec, the Drop impl does not care about &'s str, since it has
no drop glue of its own: it only wants to deallocate the backing buffer.
In other words, it would be nice if the above snippet was somehow accepted, by special casing
Vec, or by relying on some special property of Vec: Vec could try to promise not to use the
&'s strs it holds when being dropped.
This is the kind of unsafe promise that can be expressed with #[may_dangle]:
unsafe impl<#[may_dangle] 's> Drop for Vec<&'s str> { /* … */ }
or, more generally:
unsafe impl<#[may_dangle] T> Drop for Vec<T> { /* … */ }
is the unsafe way to opt out of this conservative assumption that Rust's drop checker makes
about type parameters of a dropped instance not being allowed to dangle.

50
And when this is done, such as in the standard library, we need to be careful in the case
where T has drop glue of its own. In this instance, imagine replacing the &'s strs with a
struct PrintOnDrop<'s> /* = */ (&'s str); which would have a Drop impl wherein
the inner &'s str would be dereferenced and printed to the screen.
Indeed, Drop for Vec<T> {, before deallocating the backing buffer, does have to transi-
tively drop each T item when it has drop glue; in the case of PrintOnDrop<'s>, it means
that Drop for Vec<PrintOnDrop<'s>> has to transitively drop the PrintOnDrop<'s>s
elements before deallocating the backing buffer.
So when we said that 's #[may_dangle], it was an excessively loose statement. We'd rather
want to say: ”'s may dangle provided it not be involved in some transitive drop glue”. Or,
more generally, ”T may dangle provided it not be involved in some transitive drop glue”. This
”exception to the exception” is a pervasive situation whenever we own a T. That's why Rust's
#[may_dangle] is smart enough to know of this opt-out, and will thus be disabled when the
generic parameter is held in an owned fashion by the fields of the struct.
Hence why the standard library ends up with:
// we pinky-swear not to use `T` when dropping a `Vec`…
unsafe impl<#[may_dangle] T> Drop for Vec<T> {
fn drop(&mut self) {
unsafe {
if mem::needs_drop::<T>() {
/* … except here, that is, … */
ptr::drop_in_place::<[T]>(/* … */);
}
// …
dealloc(/* … */)
// …
}
}
}

struct Vec<T> {
// … except for the fact that a `Vec` owns `T` items and
// may thus be dropping `T` items on drop!
_owns_T: core::marker::PhantomData<T>,

ptr: *const T, // `*const` for variance (but this does not express
↪ ownership of a `T` *per se*)
len: usize,
cap: usize,
}

Raw pointers that own an allocation is such a pervasive pattern that the standard library
made a utility for itself called Unique<T> which:
• wraps a *const T for variance
• includes a PhantomData<T>
• auto-derives Send/Sync as if T was contained
• marks the pointer as NonZero for the null-pointer optimization

51
Table of PhantomData patterns
Here’s a table of all the wonderful ways PhantomData could be used:

dangling 'a or T in drop

variance variance Send/Sync(or lack glue(e.g.,
Phantom type of 'a of T thereof) #[may_dangle] Drop)
PhantomData<T> - covariant inherited disallowed (”owns T”)
PhantomData<&'a
covariant covariant Send + allowed
T> SyncrequiresT :
Sync
PhantomData<&'a
covariant invariant inherited allowed
mut T>
PhantomData<*const- covariant !Send + !Sync allowed
T>
PhantomData<*mut - invariant !Send + !Sync allowed
T>
PhantomData<fn(T)>- con- Send + Sync allowed
travariant
PhantomData<fn() - covariant Send + Sync allowed
-> T>
PhantomData<fn(T) - invariant Send + Sync allowed
-> T>
PhantomData<Cell<&'a
invariant - Send + !Sync allowed
()>>

• Note: opting out of the Unpin auto-trait requires the dedicated PhantomPinned type
instead.

3.11 Splitting Borrows

The mutual exclusion property of mutable references can be very limiting when working
with a composite structure. The borrow checker (a.k.a. borrowck) understands some basic
stuff, but will fall over pretty easily. It does understand structs sufficiently to know that it's
possible to borrow disjoint fields of a struct simultaneously. So this works today:
struct Foo {
a: i32,
b: i32,
c: i32,
}

let mut x = Foo {a: 0, b: 0, c: 0};

let a = &mut x.a;
let b = &mut x.b;
let c = &x.c;
*b += 1;
let c2 = &x.c;
*a += 10;
println!("{} {} {} {}", a, b, c, c2);

52
However borrowck doesn't understand arrays or slices in any way, so this doesn't work:
let mut x = [1, 2, 3];
let a = &mut x[0];
let b = &mut x[1];
println!("{} {}", a, b);
error[E0499]: cannot borrow `x[..]` as mutable more than once at a time
--> src/lib.rs:4:18
|
3 | let a = &mut x[0];
| ---- first mutable borrow occurs here
4 | let b = &mut x[1];
| ^^^^ second mutable borrow occurs here
5 | println!("{} {}", a, b);
6 | }
| - first borrow ends here

error: aborting due to previous error

While it was plausible that borrowck could understand this simple case, it's pretty clearly
hopeless for borrowck to understand disjointness in general container types like a tree,
especially if distinct keys actually do map to the same value.
In order to ”teach” borrowck that what we're doing is ok, we need to drop down to unsafe
code. For instance, mutable slices expose a split_at_mut function that consumes the slice
and returns two mutable slices. One for everything to the left of the index, and one for
everything to the right. Intuitively we know this is safe because the slices don't overlap, and
therefore alias. However the implementation requires some unsafety:
pub fn split_at_mut(&mut self, mid: usize) -> (&mut [T], &mut [T]) {
let len = self.len();
let ptr = self.as_mut_ptr();

unsafe {
assert!(mid <= len);

(from_raw_parts_mut(ptr, mid),
from_raw_parts_mut(ptr.add(mid), len - mid))
}
}
This is actually a bit subtle. So as to avoid ever making two &mut's to the same value, we
explicitly construct brand-new slices through raw pointers.
However more subtle is how iterators that yield mutable references work. The iterator trait
is defined as follows:
trait Iterator {
type Item;

fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item>;

}
Given this definition, Self::Item has no connection to self. This means that we can call next

53
several times in a row, and hold onto all the results concurrently. This is perfectly fine for
by-value iterators, which have exactly these semantics. It's also actually fine for shared
references, as they admit arbitrarily many references to the same thing (although the iterator
needs to be a separate object from the thing being shared).
But mutable references make this a mess. At first glance, they might seem completely incom-
patible with this API, as it would produce multiple mutable references to the same object!
However it actually does work, exactly because iterators are one-shot objects. Everything an
IterMut yields will be yielded at most once, so we don't actually ever yield multiple mutable
references to the same piece of data.
Perhaps surprisingly, mutable iterators don't require unsafe code to be implemented for
many types!
For instance here's a singly linked list:
type Link<T> = Option<Box<Node<T>>>;

struct Node<T> {
elem: T,
next: Link<T>,
}

pub struct LinkedList<T> {

head: Link<T>,
}

pub struct IterMut<'a, T: 'a>(Option<&'a mut Node<T>>);

impl<T> LinkedList<T> {
fn iter_mut(&mut self) -> IterMut<T> {
IterMut(self.head.as_mut().map(|node| &mut **node))
}
}

impl<'a, T> Iterator for IterMut<'a, T> {

type Item = &'a mut T;

fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {

self.0.take().map(|node| {
self.0 = node.next.as_mut().map(|node| &mut **node);
&mut node.elem
})
}
}
Here's a mutable slice:
use std::mem;

pub struct IterMut<'a, T: 'a>(&'a mut[T]);

impl<'a, T> Iterator for IterMut<'a, T> {

54
 type Item = &'a mut T;

fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {

let slice = mem::take(&mut self.0);
if slice.is_empty() { return None; }

let (l, r) = slice.split_at_mut(1);

self.0 = r;
l.get_mut(0)
}
}

impl<'a, T> DoubleEndedIterator for IterMut<'a, T> {

fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {
let slice = mem::take(&mut self.0);
if slice.is_empty() { return None; }

let new_len = slice.len() - 1;

let (l, r) = slice.split_at_mut(new_len);
self.0 = l;
r.get_mut(0)
}
}
And here's a binary tree:
use std::collections::VecDeque;

type Link<T> = Option<Box<Node<T>>>;

struct Node<T> {
elem: T,
left: Link<T>,
right: Link<T>,
}

pub struct Tree<T> {

root: Link<T>,
}

struct NodeIterMut<'a, T: 'a> {

elem: Option<&'a mut T>,
left: Option<&'a mut Node<T>>,
right: Option<&'a mut Node<T>>,
}

enum State<'a, T: 'a> {

Elem(&'a mut T),
Node(&'a mut Node<T>),
}

pub struct IterMut<'a, T: 'a>(VecDeque<NodeIterMut<'a, T>>);

55
impl<T> Tree<T> {
pub fn iter_mut(&mut self) -> IterMut<T> {
let mut deque = VecDeque::new();
self.root.as_mut().map(|root|
↪ deque.push_front(root.iter_mut()));
IterMut(deque)
}
}

impl<T> Node<T> {
pub fn iter_mut(&mut self) -> NodeIterMut<T> {
NodeIterMut {
elem: Some(&mut self.elem),
left: self.left.as_mut().map(|node| &mut **node),
right: self.right.as_mut().map(|node| &mut **node),
}
}
}

impl<'a, T> Iterator for NodeIterMut<'a, T> {

type Item = State<'a, T>;

fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {

match self.left.take() {
Some(node) => Some(State::Node(node)),
None => match self.elem.take() {
Some(elem) => Some(State::Elem(elem)),
None => match self.right.take() {
Some(node) => Some(State::Node(node)),
None => None,
}
}
}
}
}

impl<'a, T> DoubleEndedIterator for NodeIterMut<'a, T> {

fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {
match self.right.take() {
Some(node) => Some(State::Node(node)),
None => match self.elem.take() {
Some(elem) => Some(State::Elem(elem)),
None => match self.left.take() {
Some(node) => Some(State::Node(node)),
None => None,
}
}
}
}

56
}

impl<'a, T> Iterator for IterMut<'a, T> {

type Item = &'a mut T;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {
loop {
match self.0.front_mut().and_then(|node_it| node_it.next())
↪ {
Some(State::Elem(elem)) => return Some(elem),
Some(State::Node(node)) =>
↪ self.0.push_front(node.iter_mut()),
None => if let None = self.0.pop_front() { return None
↪ },
}
}
}
}

impl<'a, T> DoubleEndedIterator for IterMut<'a, T> {

fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<Self::Item> {
loop {
match self.0.back_mut().and_then(|node_it|
↪ node_it.next_back()) {
Some(State::Elem(elem)) => return Some(elem),
Some(State::Node(node)) =>
↪ self.0.push_back(node.iter_mut()),
None => if let None = self.0.pop_back() { return None },
}
}
}
}
All of these are completely safe and work on stable Rust! This ultimately falls out of the simple
struct case we saw before: Rust understands that you can safely split a mutable reference
into subfields. We can then encode permanently consuming a reference via Options (or in
the case of slices, replacing with an empty slice).

57
Chapter 4

Type Conversions

At the end of the day, everything is just a pile of bits somewhere, and type systems are
just there to help us use those bits right. There are two common problems with typing
bits: needing to reinterpret those exact bits as a different type, and needing to change the
bits to have equivalent meaning for a different type. Because Rust encourages encoding
important properties in the type system, these problems are incredibly pervasive. As such,
Rust consequently gives you several ways to solve them.
First we'll look at the ways that Safe Rust gives you to reinterpret values. The most trivial
way to do this is to just destructure a value into its constituent parts and then build a new
type out of them. e.g.
struct Foo {
x: u32,
y: u16,
}

struct Bar {
a: u32,
b: u16,
}

fn reinterpret(foo: Foo) -> Bar {

let Foo { x, y } = foo;
Bar { a: x, b: y }
}
But this is, at best, annoying. For common conversions, Rust provides more ergonomic
alternatives.

4.1 Coercions
Types can implicitly be coerced to change in certain contexts. These changes are generally
just weakening of types, largely focused around pointers and lifetimes. They mostly exist to
make Rust ”just work” in more cases, and are largely harmless.

58
For an exhaustive list of all the types of coercions, see the Coercion types section on the
reference.
Note that we do not perform coercions when matching traits (except for receivers, see the
next page). If there is an impl for some type U and T coerces to U, that does not constitute an
implementation for T. For example, the following will not type check, even though it is OK to
coerce t to &T and there is an impl for &T:
trait Trait {}

fn foo<X: Trait>(t: X) {}

impl<'a> Trait for &'a i32 {}

fn main() {
let t: &mut i32 = &mut 0;
foo(t);
}
which fails like as follows:
error[E0277]: the trait bound `&mut i32: Trait` is not satisfied
--> src/main.rs:9:9
|
3 | fn foo<X: Trait>(t: X) {}
| ----- required by this bound in `foo`
...
9 | foo(t);
| ^ the trait `Trait` is not implemented for `&mut i32`
|
= help: the following implementations were found:
<&'a i32 as Trait>
= note: `Trait` is implemented for `&i32`, but not for `&mut i32`

4.2 The Dot Operator

The dot operator will perform a lot of magic to convert types. It will perform auto-referencing,
auto-dereferencing, and coercion until types match. The detailed mechanics of method lookup
are defined here, but here is a brief overview that outlines the main steps.
Suppose we have a function foo that has a receiver (a self, &self or &mut self parameter).
If we call value.foo(), the compiler needs to determine what type Self is before it can call
the correct implementation of the function. For this example, we will say that value has type
T.
We will use fully-qualified syntax to be more clear about exactly which type we are calling a
function on.
• First, the compiler checks if it can call T::foo(value) directly. This is called a ”by
value” method call.
• If it can't call this function (for example, if the function has the wrong type or a trait
isn't implemented for Self), then the compiler tries to add in an automatic reference.

59
 This means that the compiler tries <&T>::foo(value) and <&mut T>::foo(value).
This is called an ”autoref” method call.
• If none of these candidates worked, it dereferences T and tries again. This uses the
Deref trait - if T: Deref<Target = U> then it tries again with type U instead of T. If
it can't dereference T, it can also try unsizing T. This just means that if T has a size
parameter known at compile time, it ”forgets” it for the purpose of resolving methods.
For instance, this unsizing step can convert [i32; 2] into [i32] by ”forgetting” the
size of the array.
Here is an example of the method lookup algorithm:
let array: Rc<Box<[T; 3]>> = ...;
let first_entry = array[0];
How does the compiler actually compute array[0] when the array is behind so many in-
directions? First, array[0] is really just syntax sugar for the Index trait - the compiler
will convert array[0] into array.index(0). Now, the compiler checks to see if array
implements Index, so that it can call the function.
Then, the compiler checks if Rc<Box<[T; 3]>> implements Index, but it does not, and
neither do &Rc<Box<[T; 3]>> or &mut Rc<Box<[T; 3]>>. Since none of these worked, the
compiler dereferences the Rc<Box<[T; 3]>> into Box<[T; 3]> and tries again. Box<[T;
3]>, &Box<[T; 3]>, and &mut Box<[T; 3]> do not implement Index, so it dereferences
again. [T; 3] and its autorefs also do not implement Index. It can't dereference [T; 3],
so the compiler unsizes it, giving [T]. Finally, [T] implements Index, so it can now call the
actual index function.
Consider the following more complicated example of the dot operator at work:
fn do_stuff<T: Clone>(value: &T) {
let cloned = value.clone();
}
What type is cloned? First, the compiler checks if it can call by value. The type of value is
&T, and so the clone function has signature fn clone(&T) -> T. It knows that T: Clone,
so the compiler finds that cloned: T.
What would happen if the T: Clone restriction was removed? It would not be able to call
by value, since there is no implementation of Clone for T. So the compiler tries to call by
autoref. In this case, the function has the signature fn clone(&&T) -> &T since Self =
&T. The compiler sees that &T: Clone, and then deduces that cloned: &T.
Here is another example where the autoref behavior is used to create some subtle effects:
struct Container<T>(Arc<T>);

fn clone_containers<T>(foo: &Container<i32>, bar: &Container<T>) {

let foo_cloned = foo.clone();
let bar_cloned = bar.clone();
}
What types are foo_cloned and bar_cloned? We know that Container<i32>: Clone,
so the compiler calls clone by value to give foo_cloned: Container<i32>. However,
bar_cloned actually has type &Container<T>. Surely this doesn't make sense - we added
#[derive(Clone)] to Container, so it must implement Clone! Looking closer, the code
generated by the derive macro is (roughly):

60
impl<T> Clone for Container<T> where T: Clone {
fn clone(&self) -> Self {
Self(Arc::clone(&self.0))
}
}
The derived Clone implementation is only defined where T: Clone, so there is no imple-
mentation for Container<T>: Clone for a generic T. The compiler then looks to see if
&Container<T> implements Clone, which it does. So it deduces that clone is called by
autoref, and so bar_cloned has type &Container<T>.
We can fix this by implementing Clone manually without requiring T: Clone:
impl<T> Clone for Container<T> {
fn clone(&self) -> Self {
Self(Arc::clone(&self.0))
}
}
Now, the type checker deduces that bar_cloned: Container<T>.

4.3 Casts
Casts are a superset of coercions: every coercion can be explicitly invoked via a cast. However
some conversions require a cast. While coercions are pervasive and largely harmless, these
”true casts” are rare and potentially dangerous. As such, casts must be explicitly invoked
using the as keyword: expr as Type.
You can find an exhaustive list of all the true casts and casting semantics on the reference.

Safety of casting
True casts generally revolve around raw pointers and the primitive numeric types. Even
though they're dangerous, these casts are infallible at runtime. If a cast triggers some subtle
corner case no indication will be given that this occurred. The cast will simply succeed. That
said, casts must be valid at the type level, or else they will be prevented statically. For instance,
7u8 as bool will not compile.
That said, casts aren't unsafe because they generally can't violate memory safety on their
own. For instance, converting an integer to a raw pointer can very easily lead to terrible
things. However the act of creating the pointer itself is safe, because actually using a raw
pointer is already marked as unsafe.

Some notes about casting

Lengths when casting raw slices

Note that lengths are not adjusted when casting raw slices; *const [u16] as *const [u8]
creates a slice that only includes half of the original memory.

61
Transitivity

Casting is not transitive, that is, even if e as U1 as U2 is a valid expression, e as U2 is not

necessarily so.

4.4 Transmutes
Get out of our way type system! We're going to reinterpret these bits or die trying! Even
though this book is all about doing things that are unsafe, I really can't emphasize enough
that you should deeply think about finding Another Way than the operations covered in this
section. This is really, truly, the most horribly unsafe thing you can do in Rust. The guardrails
here are dental floss.
mem::transmute<T, U> takes a value of type T and reinterprets it to have type U. The only
restriction is that the T and U are verified to have the same size. The ways to cause Undefined
Behavior with this are mind boggling.
• First and foremost, creating an instance of any type with an invalid state is going to
cause arbitrary chaos that can't really be predicted. Do not transmute 3 to bool. Even
if you never do anything with the bool. Just don't.
• Transmute has an overloaded return type. If you do not specify the return type it may
produce a surprising type to satisfy inference.
• Transmuting an & to &mut is Undefined Behavior. While certain usages may appear safe,
note that the Rust optimizer is free to assume that a shared reference won't change
through its lifetime and thus such transmutation will run afoul of those assumptions.
So:
– Transmuting an & to &mut is always Undefined Behavior.
– No you can't do it.
– No you're not special.
• Transmuting to a reference without an explicitly provided lifetime produces an un-
bounded lifetime.
• When transmuting between different compound types, you have to make sure they are
laid out the same way! If layouts differ, the wrong fields are going to get filled with the
wrong data, which will make you unhappy and can also be Undefined Behavior (see
above).
So how do you know if the layouts are the same? For repr(C) types and
repr(transparent) types, layout is precisely defined. But for your run-of-the-
mill repr(Rust), it is not. Even different instances of the same generic type can have
wildly different layout. Vec<i32> and Vec<u32> might have their fields in the same
order, or they might not. The details of what exactly is and is not guaranteed for data
layout are still being worked out over at the UCG WG.
mem::transmute_copy<T, U> somehow manages to be even more wildly unsafe than this.
It copies size_of<U> bytes out of an &T and interprets them as a U. The size check that
mem::transmute has is gone (as it may be valid to copy out a prefix), though it is Undefined
Behavior for U to be larger than T.
Also of course you can get all of the functionality of these functions using raw pointer casts
or unions, but without any of the lints or other basic sanity checks. Raw pointer casts and

62
unions do not magically avoid the above rules.

63
Chapter 5

Working With Uninitialized

Memory

All runtime-allocated memory in a Rust program begins its life as uninitialized. In this state
the value of the memory is an indeterminate pile of bits that may or may not even reflect a
valid state for the type that is supposed to inhabit that location of memory. Attempting to
interpret this memory as a value of any type will cause Undefined Behavior. Do Not Do This.
Rust provides mechanisms to work with uninitialized memory in checked (safe) and
unchecked (unsafe) ways.

5.1 Checked Uninitialized Memory

Like C, all stack variables in Rust are uninitialized until a value is explicitly assigned to them.
Unlike C, Rust statically prevents you from ever reading them until you do:
fn main() {
let x: i32;
println!("{}", x);
}
|
3 | println!("{}", x);
| ^ use of possibly uninitialized `x`
This is based off of a basic branch analysis: every branch must assign a value to x before it is
first used. For short, we also say that ”x is init” or ”x is uninit”.
Interestingly, Rust doesn't require the variable to be mutable to perform a delayed initializa-
tion if every branch assigns exactly once. However the analysis does not take advantage of
constant analysis or anything like that. So this compiles:
fn main() {
let x: i32;

if true {
x = 1;

64
 } else {
x = 2;
}

println!("{}", x);
}
but this doesn't:
fn main() {
let x: i32;
if true {
x = 1;
}
println!("{}", x);
}
|
6 | println!("{}", x);
| ^ use of possibly uninitialized `x`
while this does:
fn main() {
let x: i32;
if true {
x = 1;
println!("{}", x);
}
// Don't care that there are branches where it's not initialized
// since we don't use the value in those branches
}
Of course, while the analysis doesn't consider actual values, it does have a relatively sophisti-
cated understanding of dependencies and control flow. For instance, this works:
let x: i32;

loop {
// Rust doesn't understand that this branch will be taken
↪ unconditionally,
// because it relies on actual values.
if true {
// But it does understand that it will only be taken once
↪ because
// we unconditionally break out of it. Therefore `x` doesn't
// need to be marked as mutable.
x = 0;
break;
}
}
// It also knows that it's impossible to get here without reaching the
↪ break.
// And therefore that `x` must be initialized here!

65
println!("{}", x);
If a value is moved out of a variable, that variable becomes logically uninitialized if the type
of the value isn't Copy. That is:
fn main() {
let x = 0;
let y = Box::new(0);
let z1 = x; // x is still valid because i32 is Copy
let z2 = y; // y is now logically uninitialized because Box isn't
↪ Copy
}
However reassigning y in this example would require y to be marked as mutable, as a Safe
Rust program could observe that the value of y changed:
fn main() {
let mut y = Box::new(0);
let z = y; // y is now logically uninitialized because Box isn't
↪ Copy
y = Box::new(1); // reinitialize y
}
Otherwise it's like y is a brand new variable.

5.2 Drop Flags

The examples in the previous section introduce an interesting problem for Rust. We have seen
that it's possible to conditionally initialize, deinitialize, and reinitialize locations of memory
totally safely. For Copy types, this isn't particularly notable since they're just a random pile of
bits. However types with destructors are a different story: Rust needs to know whether to
call a destructor whenever a variable is assigned to, or a variable goes out of scope. How can
it do this with conditional initialization?
Note that this is not a problem that all assignments need worry about. In particular, assigning
through a dereference unconditionally drops, and assigning in a let unconditionally doesn't
drop:
let mut x = Box::new(0); // let makes a fresh variable, so never need to
↪ drop
let y = &mut x;
*y = Box::new(1); // Deref assumes the referent is initialized, so
↪ always drops
This is only a problem when overwriting a previously initialized variable or one of its sub-
fields.
It turns out that Rust actually tracks whether a type should be dropped or not at runtime.
As a variable becomes initialized and uninitialized, a drop flag for that variable is toggled.
When a variable might need to be dropped, this flag is evaluated to determine if it should be
dropped.
Of course, it is often the case that a value's initialization state can be statically known at every
point in the program. If this is the case, then the compiler can theoretically generate more
efficient code! For instance, straight- line code has such static drop semantics:

66
let mut x = Box::new(0); // x was uninit; just overwrite.
let mut y = x; // y was uninit; just overwrite and make x
↪ uninit.
x = Box::new(0); // x was uninit; just overwrite.
y = x; // y was init; Drop y, overwrite it, and make x
↪ uninit!
// y goes out of scope; y was init; Drop y!
// x goes out of scope; x was uninit; do
↪ nothing.
Similarly, branched code where all branches have the same behavior with respect to initial-
ization has static drop semantics:
let mut x = Box::new(0); // x was uninit; just overwrite.
if condition {
drop(x) // x gets moved out; make x uninit.
} else {
println!("{}", x);
drop(x) // x gets moved out; make x uninit.
}
x = Box::new(0); // x was uninit; just overwrite.
// x goes out of scope; x was init; Drop x!
However code like this requires runtime information to correctly Drop:
let x;
if condition {
x = Box::new(0); // x was uninit; just overwrite.
println!("{}", x);
}
// x goes out of scope; x might be uninit;
// check the flag!
Of course, in this case it's trivial to retrieve static drop semantics:
if condition {
let x = Box::new(0);
println!("{}", x);
}
The drop flags are tracked on the stack. In old Rust versions, drop flags were stashed in a
hidden field of types that implement Drop.

5.3 Unchecked Uninitialized Memory

One interesting exception to this rule is working with arrays. Safe Rust doesn't permit you to
partially initialize an array. When you initialize an array, you can either set every value to
the same thing with let x = [val; N], or you can specify each member individually with
let x = [val1, val2, val3]. Unfortunately this is pretty rigid, especially if you need to
initialize your array in a more incremental or dynamic way.
Unsafe Rust gives us a powerful tool to handle this problem: MaybeUninit. This type can be
used to handle memory that has not been fully initialized yet.

67
With MaybeUninit, we can initialize an array element by element as follows:
use std::mem::{self, MaybeUninit};

// Size of the array is hard-coded but easy to change (meaning, changing

↪ just
// the constant is sufficient). This means we can't use [a, b, c] syntax
↪ to
// initialize the array, though, as we would have to keep that in sync
// with `SIZE`!
const SIZE: usize = 10;

let x = {
// Create an uninitialized array of `MaybeUninit`. The `assume_init`
↪ is
// safe because the type we are claiming to have initialized here is
↪ a
// bunch of `MaybeUninit`s, which do not require initialization.
let mut x: [MaybeUninit<Box<u32>>; SIZE] = unsafe {
MaybeUninit::uninit().assume_init()
};

// Dropping a `MaybeUninit` does nothing. Thus using raw pointer

// assignment instead of `ptr::write` does not cause the old
// uninitialized value to be dropped.
// Exception safety is not a concern because Box can't panic
for i in 0..SIZE {
x[i] = MaybeUninit::new(Box::new(i as u32));
}

// Everything is initialized. Transmute the array to the

// initialized type.
unsafe { mem::transmute::<_, [Box<u32>; SIZE]>(x) }
};

dbg!(x);
This code proceeds in three steps:
1. Create an array of MaybeUninit<T>. With current stable Rust, we have to use unsafe
code for this: we take some uninitialized piece of memory (MaybeUninit::uninit())
and claim we have fully initialized it (assume_init()). This seems ridiculous, be-
cause we didn't! The reason this is correct is that the array consists itself entirely of
MaybeUninit, which do not actually require initialization. For most other types, doing
MaybeUninit::uninit().assume_init() produces an invalid instance of said type,
so you got yourself some Undefined Behavior.
2. Initialize the array. The subtle aspect of this is that usually, when we use = to assign to a
value that the Rust type checker considers to already be initialized (like x[i]), the old
value stored on the left-hand side gets dropped. This would be a disaster. However, in
this case, the type of the left-hand side is MaybeUninit<Box<u32>>, and dropping that
does not do anything! See below for some more discussion of this drop issue.

68
 3. Finally, we have to change the type of our array to remove the MaybeUninit. With
current stable Rust, this requires a transmute. This transmute is legal because in
memory, MaybeUninit<T> looks the same as T.
However, note that in general, Container<MaybeUninit<T>>> does not look
the same as Container<T>! Imagine if Container was Option, and T was
bool, then Option<bool> exploits that bool only has two valid values, but
Option<MaybeUninit<bool>> cannot do that because the bool does not have
to be initialized.
So, it depends on Container whether transmuting away the MaybeUninit is allowed.
For arrays, it is (and eventually the standard library will acknowledge that by providing
appropriate methods).
It's worth spending a bit more time on the loop in the middle, and in particular the assignment
operator and its interaction with drop. If we wrote something like:
*x[i].as_mut_ptr() = Box::new(i as u32); // WRONG!
we would actually overwrite a Box<u32>, leading to drop of uninitialized data, which would
cause much sadness and pain.
The correct alternative, if for some reason we cannot use MaybeUninit::new, is to use the
ptr module. In particular, it provides three functions that allow us to assign bytes to a location
in memory without dropping the old value: write, copy, and copy_nonoverlapping.
• ptr::write(ptr, val) takes a val and moves it into the address pointed to by ptr.
• ptr::copy(src, dest, count) copies the bits that count T items would occupy from
src to dest. (this is equivalent to C's memmove -- note that the argument order is
reversed!)
• ptr::copy_nonoverlapping(src, dest, count) does what copy does, but a little
faster on the assumption that the two ranges of memory don't overlap. (this is equivalent
to C's memcpy -- note that the argument order is reversed!)
It should go without saying that these functions, if misused, will cause serious havoc or just
straight up Undefined Behavior. The only requirement of these functions themselves is that
the locations you want to read and write are allocated and properly aligned. However, the
ways writing arbitrary bits to arbitrary locations of memory can break things are basically
uncountable!
It's worth noting that you don't need to worry about ptr::write-style shenanigans with
types which don't implement Drop or contain Drop types, because Rust knows not to try to
drop them. This is what we relied on in the above example.
However when working with uninitialized memory you need to be ever-vigilant for Rust
trying to drop values you make like this before they're fully initialized. Every control path
through that variable's scope must initialize the value before it ends, if it has a destructor.
This includes code panicking. MaybeUninit helps a bit here, because it does not implicitly
drop its content - but all this really means in case of a panic is that instead of a double-free of
the not yet initialized parts, you end up with a memory leak of the already initialized parts.
Note that, to use the ptr methods, you need to first obtain a raw pointer to the data you want
to initialize. It is illegal to construct a reference to uninitialized data, which implies that you
have to be careful when obtaining said raw pointer:
• For an array of T, you can use base_ptr.add(idx) where base_ptr: *mut T to com-
pute the address of array index idx. This relies on how arrays are laid out in memory.

69
 • For a struct, however, in general we do not know how it is laid out, and we also cannot use
&mut base_ptr.field as that would be creating a reference. So, you must carefully
use the addr_of_mut macro. This creates a raw pointer to the field without creating an
intermediate reference:
use std::{ptr, mem::MaybeUninit};

struct Demo {
field: bool,
}

let mut uninit = MaybeUninit::<Demo>::uninit();

// `&uninit.as_mut().field` would create a reference to an uninitialized
↪ `bool`,
// and thus be Undefined Behavior!
let f1_ptr = unsafe { ptr::addr_of_mut!((*uninit.as_mut_ptr()).field) };
unsafe { f1_ptr.write(true); }

let init = unsafe { uninit.assume_init() };

One last remark: when reading old Rust code, you might stumble upon the deprecated
mem::uninitialized function. That function used to be the only way to deal with uninitial-
ized memory on the stack, but it turned out to be impossible to properly integrate with the
rest of the language. Always use MaybeUninit instead in new code, and port old code over
when you get the opportunity.
And that's about it for working with uninitialized memory! Basically nothing anywhere
expects to be handed uninitialized memory, so if you're going to pass it around at all, be sure
to be really careful.

70
Chapter 6

The Perils Of Ownership Based

Resource Management (OBRM)

OBRM (AKA RAII: Resource Acquisition Is Initialization) is something you'll interact with a lot
in Rust. Especially if you use the standard library.
Roughly speaking the pattern is as follows: to acquire a resource, you create an object that
manages it. To release the resource, you simply destroy the object, and it cleans up the
resource for you. The most common ”resource” this pattern manages is simply memory.
Box, Rc, and basically everything in std::collections is a convenience to enable correctly
managing memory. This is particularly important in Rust because we have no pervasive
GC to rely on for memory management. Which is the point, really: Rust is about control.
However we are not limited to just memory. Pretty much every other system resource like a
thread, file, or socket is exposed through this kind of API.

6.1 Constructors
There is exactly one way to create an instance of a user-defined type: name it, and initialize
all its fields at once:
struct Foo {
a: u8,
b: u32,
c: bool,
}

enum Bar {
X(u32),
Y(bool),
}

struct Unit;

let foo = Foo { a: 0, b: 1, c: false };

71
let bar = Bar::X(0);
let empty = Unit;
That's it. Every other way you make an instance of a type is just calling a totally vanilla
function that does some stuff and eventually bottoms out to The One True Constructor.
Unlike C++, Rust does not come with a slew of built-in kinds of constructor. There are no Copy,
Default, Assignment, Move, or whatever constructors. The reasons for this are varied, but it
largely boils down to Rust's philosophy of being explicit.
Move constructors are meaningless in Rust because we don't enable types to ”care” about their
location in memory. Every type must be ready for it to be blindly memcopied to somewhere
else in memory. This means pure on-the-stack-but- still-movable intrusive linked lists are
simply not happening in Rust (safely).
Assignment and copy constructors similarly don't exist because move semantics are the only
semantics in Rust. At most x = y just moves the bits of y into the x variable. Rust does
provide two facilities for providing C++'s copy- oriented semantics: Copy and Clone. Clone
is our moral equivalent of a copy constructor, but it's never implicitly invoked. You have to
explicitly call clone on an element you want to be cloned. Copy is a special case of Clone
where the implementation is just ”copy the bits”. Copy types are implicitly cloned whenever
they're moved, but because of the definition of Copy this just means not treating the old copy
as uninitialized -- a no-op.
While Rust provides a Default trait for specifying the moral equivalent of a default construc-
tor, it's incredibly rare for this trait to be used. This is because variables aren't implicitly
initialized. Default is basically only useful for generic programming. In concrete contexts,
a type will provide a static new method for any kind of ”default” constructor. This has no
relation to new in other languages and has no special meaning. It's just a naming convention.
TODO: talk about ”placement new”?

6.2 Destructors
What the language does provide is full-blown automatic destructors through the Drop trait,
which provides the following method:
fn drop(&mut self);
This method gives the type time to somehow finish what it was doing.
After drop is run, Rust will recursively try to drop all of the fields of self.
This is a convenience feature so that you don't have to write ”destructor boilerplate” to drop
children. If a struct has no special logic for being dropped other than dropping its children,
then it means Drop doesn't need to be implemented at all!
There is no stable way to prevent this behavior in Rust 1.0.
Note that taking &mut self means that even if you could suppress recursive Drop, Rust will
prevent you from e.g. moving fields out of self. For most types, this is totally fine.
For instance, a custom implementation of Box might write Drop like this:

use std::alloc::{Allocator, Global, GlobalAlloc, Layout};

use std::mem;

72
use std::ptr::{drop_in_place, NonNull, Unique};

struct Box<T>{ ptr: Unique<T> }

impl<T> Drop for Box<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
unsafe {
drop_in_place(self.ptr.as_ptr());
let c: NonNull<T> = self.ptr.into();
Global.deallocate(c.cast(), Layout::new::<T>())
}
}
}
and this works fine because when Rust goes to drop the ptr field it just sees a Unique that
has no actual Drop implementation. Similarly nothing can use-after-free the ptr because
when drop exits, it becomes inaccessible.
However this wouldn't work:

use std::alloc::{Allocator, Global, GlobalAlloc, Layout};

use std::ptr::{drop_in_place, Unique, NonNull};
use std::mem;

struct Box<T>{ ptr: Unique<T> }

impl<T> Drop for Box<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
unsafe {
drop_in_place(self.ptr.as_ptr());
let c: NonNull<T> = self.ptr.into();
Global.deallocate(c.cast(), Layout::new::<T>());
}
}
}

struct SuperBox<T> { my_box: Box<T> }

impl<T> Drop for SuperBox<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
unsafe {
// Hyper-optimized: deallocate the box's contents for it
// without `drop`ing the contents
let c: NonNull<T> = self.my_box.ptr.into();
Global.deallocate(c.cast::<u8>(), Layout::new::<T>());
}
}
}
After we deallocate the box's ptr in SuperBox's destructor, Rust will happily proceed to tell
the box to Drop itself and everything will blow up with use-after-frees and double-frees.

73
Note that the recursive drop behavior applies to all structs and enums regardless of whether
they implement Drop. Therefore something like
struct Boxy<T> {
data1: Box<T>,
data2: Box<T>,
info: u32,
}
will have its data1 and data2's fields destructors whenever it ”would” be dropped, even
though it itself doesn't implement Drop. We say that such a type needs Drop, even though it is
not itself Drop.
Similarly,
enum Link {
Next(Box<Link>),
None,
}
will have its inner Box field dropped if and only if an instance stores the Next variant.
In general this works really nicely because you don't need to worry about adding/removing
drops when you refactor your data layout. Still there's certainly many valid use cases for
needing to do trickier things with destructors.
The classic safe solution to overriding recursive drop and allowing moving out of Self during
drop is to use an Option:

use std::alloc::{Allocator, GlobalAlloc, Global, Layout};

use std::ptr::{drop_in_place, Unique, NonNull};
use std::mem;

struct Box<T>{ ptr: Unique<T> }

impl<T> Drop for Box<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
unsafe {
drop_in_place(self.ptr.as_ptr());
let c: NonNull<T> = self.ptr.into();
Global.deallocate(c.cast(), Layout::new::<T>());
}
}
}

struct SuperBox<T> { my_box: Option<Box<T>> }

impl<T> Drop for SuperBox<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
unsafe {
// Hyper-optimized: deallocate the box's contents for it
// without `drop`ing the contents. Need to set the `box`
// field as `None` to prevent Rust from trying to Drop it.
let my_box = self.my_box.take().unwrap();

74
 let c: NonNull<T> = my_box.ptr.into();
Global.deallocate(c.cast(), Layout::new::<T>());
mem::forget(my_box);
}
}
}
However this has fairly odd semantics: you're saying that a field that should always be Some
may be None, just because that happens in the destructor. Of course this conversely makes
a lot of sense: you can call arbitrary methods on self during the destructor, and this should
prevent you from ever doing so after deinitializing the field. Not that it will prevent you from
producing any other arbitrarily invalid state in there.
On balance this is an ok choice. Certainly what you should reach for by default. However,
in the future we expect there to be a first-class way to announce that a field shouldn't be
automatically dropped.

6.3 Leaking
Ownership-based resource management is intended to simplify composition. You acquire
resources when you create the object, and you release the resources when it gets destroyed.
Since destruction is handled for you, it means you can't forget to release the resources, and it
happens as soon as possible! Surely this is perfect and all of our problems are solved.
Everything is terrible and we have new and exotic problems to try to solve.
Many people like to believe that Rust eliminates resource leaks. In practice, this is basically
true. You would be surprised to see a Safe Rust program leak resources in an uncontrolled
way.
However from a theoretical perspective this is absolutely not the case, no matter how you
look at it. In the strictest sense, ”leaking” is so abstract as to be unpreventable. It's quite trivial
to initialize a collection at the start of a program, fill it with tons of objects with destructors,
and then enter an infinite event loop that never refers to it. The collection will sit around
uselessly, holding on to its precious resources until the program terminates (at which point
all those resources would have been reclaimed by the OS anyway).
We may consider a more restricted form of leak: failing to drop a value that is unreachable.
Rust also doesn't prevent this. In fact Rust has a function for doing this: mem::forget. This
function consumes the value it is passed and then doesn't run its destructor.
In the past mem::forget was marked as unsafe as a sort of lint against using it, since failing
to call a destructor is generally not a well-behaved thing to do (though useful for some special
unsafe code). However this was generally determined to be an untenable stance to take:
there are many ways to fail to call a destructor in safe code. The most famous example is
creating a cycle of reference-counted pointers using interior mutability.
It is reasonable for safe code to assume that destructor leaks do not happen, as any program
that leaks destructors is probably wrong. However unsafe code cannot rely on destructors to
be run in order to be safe. For most types this doesn't matter: if you leak the destructor then
the type is by definition inaccessible, so it doesn't matter, right? For instance, if you leak a
Box<u8> then you waste some memory but that's hardly going to violate memory-safety.
However where we must be careful with destructor leaks are proxy types. These are types

75
which manage access to a distinct object, but don't actually own it. Proxy objects are quite
rare. Proxy objects you'll need to care about are even rarer. However we'll focus on three
interesting examples in the standard library:
• vec::Drain
• Rc
• thread::scoped::JoinGuard

Drain
drain is a collections API that moves data out of the container without consuming the
container. This enables us to reuse the allocation of a Vec after claiming ownership over all
of its contents. It produces an iterator (Drain) that returns the contents of the Vec by-value.
Now, consider Drain in the middle of iteration: some values have been moved out, and others
haven't. This means that part of the Vec is now full of logically uninitialized data! We could
backshift all the elements in the Vec every time we remove a value, but this would have pretty
catastrophic performance consequences.
Instead, we would like Drain to fix the Vec's backing storage when it is dropped. It should run
itself to completion, backshift any elements that weren't removed (drain supports subranges),
and then fix Vec's len. It's even unwinding-safe! Easy!
Now consider the following:
let mut vec = vec![Box::new(0); 4];

{
// start draining, vec can no longer be accessed
let mut drainer = vec.drain(..);

// pull out two elements and immediately drop them

drainer.next();
drainer.next();

// get rid of drainer, but don't call its destructor

mem::forget(drainer);
}

// Oops, vec[0] was dropped, we're reading a pointer into free'd memory!
println!("{}", vec[0]);
This is pretty clearly Not Good. Unfortunately, we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard
place: maintaining consistent state at every step has an enormous cost (and would negate
any benefits of the API). Failing to maintain consistent state gives us Undefined Behavior in
safe code (making the API unsound).
So what can we do? Well, we can pick a trivially consistent state: set the Vec's len to be 0
when we start the iteration, and fix it up if necessary in the destructor. That way, if everything
executes like normal we get the desired behavior with minimal overhead. But if someone has
the audacity to mem::forget us in the middle of the iteration, all that does is leak even more
(and possibly leave the Vec in an unexpected but otherwise consistent state). Since we've
accepted that mem::forget is safe, this is definitely safe. We call leaks causing more leaks a
leak amplification.

76
Rc
Rc is an interesting case because at first glance it doesn't appear to be a proxy value at all.
After all, it manages the data it points to, and dropping all the Rcs for a value will drop that
value. Leaking an Rc doesn't seem like it would be particularly dangerous. It will leave the
refcount permanently incremented and prevent the data from being freed or dropped, but
that seems just like Box, right?
Nope.
Let's consider a simplified implementation of Rc:
struct Rc<T> {
ptr: *mut RcBox<T>,
}

struct RcBox<T> {
data: T,
ref_count: usize,
}

impl<T> Rc<T> {
fn new(data: T) -> Self {
unsafe {
// Wouldn't it be nice if heap::allocate worked like this?
let ptr = heap::allocate::<RcBox<T>>();
ptr::write(ptr, RcBox {
data,
ref_count: 1,
});
Rc { ptr }
}
}

fn clone(&self) -> Self {

unsafe {
(*self.ptr).ref_count += 1;
}
Rc { ptr: self.ptr }
}
}

impl<T> Drop for Rc<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
unsafe {
(*self.ptr).ref_count -= 1;
if (*self.ptr).ref_count == 0 {
// drop the data and then free it
ptr::read(self.ptr);
heap::deallocate(self.ptr);
}
}
}

77
}
This code contains an implicit and subtle assumption: ref_count can fit in a usize, because
there can't be more than usize::MAX Rcs in memory. However this itself assumes that the
ref_count accurately reflects the number of Rcs in memory, which we know is false with
mem::forget. Using mem::forget we can overflow the ref_count, and then get it down to
0 with outstanding Rcs. Then we can happily use-after-free the inner data. Bad Bad Not Good.
This can be solved by just checking the ref_count and doing something. The standard
library's stance is to just abort, because your program has become horribly degenerate. Also
oh my gosh it's such a ridiculous corner case.

thread::scoped::JoinGuard
Note: This API has already been removed from std, for more information you may
refer issue #24292.
This section remains here because we think this example is still important, regard-
less of whether it is part of std or not.
The thread::scoped API intended to allow threads to be spawned that reference data on their
parent's stack without any synchronization over that data by ensuring the parent joins the
thread before any of the shared data goes out of scope.
pub fn scoped<'a, F>(f: F) -> JoinGuard<'a>
where F: FnOnce() + Send + 'a
Here f is some closure for the other thread to execute. Saying that F: Send + 'a is saying
that it closes over data that lives for 'a, and it either owns that data or the data was Sync
(implying &data is Send).
Because JoinGuard has a lifetime, it keeps all the data it closes over borrowed in the parent
thread. This means the JoinGuard can't outlive the data that the other thread is working
on. When the JoinGuard does get dropped it blocks the parent thread, ensuring the child
terminates before any of the closed-over data goes out of scope in the parent.
Usage looked like:
let mut data = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10];
{
let mut guards = vec![];
for x in &mut data {
// Move the mutable reference into the closure, and execute
// it on a different thread. The closure has a lifetime bound
// by the lifetime of the mutable reference `x` we store in it.
// The guard that is returned is in turn assigned the lifetime
// of the closure, so it also mutably borrows `data` as `x` did.
// This means we cannot access `data` until the guard goes away.
let guard = thread::scoped(move || {
*x *= 2;
});
// store the thread's guard for later
guards.push(guard);
}
// All guards are dropped here, forcing the threads to join

78
 // (this thread blocks here until the others terminate).
// Once the threads join, the borrow expires and the data becomes
// accessible again in this thread.
}
// data is definitely mutated here.
In principle, this totally works! Rust's ownership system perfectly ensures it! ...except it relies
on a destructor being called to be safe.
let mut data = Box::new(0);
{
let guard = thread::scoped(|| {
// This is at best a data race. At worst, it's also a
↪ use-after-free.
*data += 1;
});
// Because the guard is forgotten, expiring the loan without
↪ blocking this
// thread.
mem::forget(guard);
}
// So the Box is dropped here while the scoped thread may or may not be
↪ trying
// to access it.
Dang. Here the destructor running was pretty fundamental to the API, and it had to be
scrapped in favor of a completely different design.

79
Chapter 7

Unwinding

Rust has a tiered error-handling scheme:

• If something might reasonably be absent, Option is used.
• If something goes wrong and can reasonably be handled, Result is used.
• If something goes wrong and cannot reasonably be handled, the thread panics.
• If something catastrophic happens, the program aborts.
Option and Result are overwhelmingly preferred in most situations, especially since they can
be promoted into a panic or abort at the API user's discretion. Panics cause the thread to
halt normal execution and unwind its stack, calling destructors as if every function instantly
returned.
As of 1.0, Rust is of two minds when it comes to panics. In the long-long-ago, Rust was much
more like Erlang. Like Erlang, Rust had lightweight tasks, and tasks were intended to kill
themselves with a panic when they reached an untenable state. Unlike an exception in Java
or C++, a panic could not be caught at any time. Panics could only be caught by the owner of
the task, at which point they had to be handled or that task would itself panic.
Unwinding was important to this story because if a task's destructors weren't called, it would
cause memory and other system resources to leak. Since tasks were expected to die during
normal execution, this would make Rust very poor for long-running systems!
As the Rust we know today came to be, this style of programming grew out of fashion in the
push for less-and-less abstraction. Light-weight tasks were killed in the name of heavy-weight
OS threads. Still, on stable Rust as of 1.0 panics can only be caught by the parent thread. This
means catching a panic requires spinning up an entire OS thread! This unfortunately stands
in conflict to Rust's philosophy of zero-cost abstractions.
There is an API called catch_unwind that enables catching a panic without spawning a
thread. Still, we would encourage you to only do this sparingly. In particular, Rust's current
unwinding implementation is heavily optimized for the ”doesn't unwind” case. If a program
doesn't unwind, there should be no runtime cost for the program being ready to unwind. As
a consequence, actually unwinding will be more expensive than in e.g. Java. Don't build
your programs to unwind under normal circumstances. Ideally, you should only panic for
programming errors or extreme problems.
Rust's unwinding strategy is not specified to be fundamentally compatible with any other
language's unwinding. As such, unwinding into Rust from another language, or unwinding

80
into another language from Rust is Undefined Behavior. You must absolutely catch any panics
at the FFI boundary! What you do at that point is up to you, but something must be done. If
you fail to do this, at best, your application will crash and burn. At worst, your application
won't crash and burn, and will proceed with completely clobbered state.

7.1 Exception Safety

Although programs should use unwinding sparingly, there's a lot of code that can panic. If
you unwrap a None, index out of bounds, or divide by 0, your program will panic. On debug
builds, every arithmetic operation can panic if it overflows. Unless you are very careful and
tightly control what code runs, pretty much everything can unwind, and you need to be ready
for it.
Being ready for unwinding is often referred to as exception safety in the broader programming
world. In Rust, there are two levels of exception safety that one may concern themselves
with:
• In unsafe code, we must be exception safe to the point of not violating memory safety.
We'll call this minimal exception safety.
• In safe code, it is good to be exception safe to the point of your program doing the right
thing. We'll call this maximal exception safety.
As is the case in many places in Rust, Unsafe code must be ready to deal with bad Safe code
when it comes to unwinding. Code that transiently creates unsound states must be careful
that a panic does not cause that state to be used. Generally this means ensuring that only
non-panicking code is run while these states exist, or making a guard that cleans up the state
in the case of a panic. This does not necessarily mean that the state a panic witnesses is a
fully coherent state. We need only guarantee that it's a safe state.
Most Unsafe code is leaf-like, and therefore fairly easy to make exception-safe. It controls
all the code that runs, and most of that code can't panic. However it is not uncommon for
Unsafe code to work with arrays of temporarily uninitialized data while repeatedly invoking
caller-provided code. Such code needs to be careful and consider exception safety.

Vec::push_all
Vec::push_all is a temporary hack to get extending a Vec by a slice reliably efficient without
specialization. Here's a simple implementation:
impl<T: Clone> Vec<T> {
fn push_all(&mut self, to_push: &[T]) {
self.reserve(to_push.len());
unsafe {
// can't overflow because we just reserved this
self.set_len(self.len() + to_push.len());

for (i, x) in to_push.iter().enumerate() {

self.ptr().add(i).write(x.clone());
}
}
}
}

81
We bypass push in order to avoid redundant capacity and len checks on the Vec that we
definitely know has capacity. The logic is totally correct, except there's a subtle problem with
our code: it's not exception-safe! set_len, add, and write are all fine; clone is the panic
bomb we over-looked.
Clone is completely out of our control, and is totally free to panic. If it does, our function
will exit early with the length of the Vec set too large. If the Vec is looked at or dropped,
uninitialized memory will be read!
The fix in this case is fairly simple. If we want to guarantee that the values we did clone
are dropped, we can set the len every loop iteration. If we just want to guarantee that
uninitialized memory can't be observed, we can set the len after the loop.

BinaryHeap::sift_up
Bubbling an element up a heap is a bit more complicated than extending a Vec. The pseu-
docode is as follows:
bubble_up(heap, index):
while index != 0 && heap[index] < heap[parent(index)]:
heap.swap(index, parent(index))
index = parent(index)
A literal transcription of this code to Rust is totally fine, but has an annoying performance
characteristic: the self element is swapped over and over again uselessly. We would rather
have the following:
bubble_up(heap, index):
let elem = heap[index]
while index != 0 && elem < heap[parent(index)]:
heap[index] = heap[parent(index)]
index = parent(index)
heap[index] = elem
This code ensures that each element is copied as little as possible (it is in fact necessary that
elem be copied twice in general). However it now exposes some exception safety trouble! At
all times, there exists two copies of one value. If we panic in this function something will be
double-dropped. Unfortunately, we also don't have full control of the code: that comparison
is user-defined!
Unlike Vec, the fix isn't as easy here. One option is to break the user-defined code and the
unsafe code into two separate phases:
bubble_up(heap, index):
let end_index = index;
while end_index != 0 && heap[end_index] < heap[parent(end_index)]:
end_index = parent(end_index)

let elem = heap[index]

while index != end_index:
heap[index] = heap[parent(index)]
index = parent(index)
heap[index] = elem

82
If the user-defined code blows up, that's no problem anymore, because we haven't actually
touched the state of the heap yet. Once we do start messing with the heap, we're working
with only data and functions that we trust, so there's no concern of panics.
Perhaps you're not happy with this design. Surely it's cheating! And we have to do the
complex heap traversal twice! Alright, let's bite the bullet. Let's intermix untrusted and
unsafe code for reals.
If Rust had try and finally like in Java, we could do the following:
bubble_up(heap, index):
let elem = heap[index]
try:
while index != 0 && elem < heap[parent(index)]:
heap[index] = heap[parent(index)]
index = parent(index)
finally:
heap[index] = elem
The basic idea is simple: if the comparison panics, we just toss the loose element in the
logically uninitialized index and bail out. Anyone who observes the heap will see a potentially
inconsistent heap, but at least it won't cause any double-drops! If the algorithm terminates
normally, then this operation happens to coincide precisely with how we finish up regardless.
Sadly, Rust has no such construct, so we're going to need to roll our own! The way to do this
is to store the algorithm's state in a separate struct with a destructor for the ”finally” logic.
Whether we panic or not, that destructor will run and clean up after us.
struct Hole<'a, T: 'a> {
data: &'a mut [T],
/// `elt` is always `Some` from new until drop.
elt: Option<T>,
pos: usize,
}

impl<'a, T> Hole<'a, T> {

fn new(data: &'a mut [T], pos: usize) -> Self {
unsafe {
let elt = ptr::read(&data[pos]);
Hole {
data,
elt: Some(elt),
pos,
}
}
}

fn pos(&self) -> usize { self.pos }

fn removed(&self) -> &T { self.elt.as_ref().unwrap() }

fn get(&self, index: usize) -> &T { &self.data[index] }

unsafe fn move_to(&mut self, index: usize) {

83
 let index_ptr: *const _ = &self.data[index];
let hole_ptr = &mut self.data[self.pos];
ptr::copy_nonoverlapping(index_ptr, hole_ptr, 1);
self.pos = index;
}
}

impl<'a, T> Drop for Hole<'a, T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
// fill the hole again
unsafe {
let pos = self.pos;
ptr::write(&mut self.data[pos], self.elt.take().unwrap());
}
}
}

impl<T: Ord> BinaryHeap<T> {

fn sift_up(&mut self, pos: usize) {
unsafe {
// Take out the value at `pos` and create a hole.
let mut hole = Hole::new(&mut self.data, pos);

while hole.pos() != 0 {
let parent = parent(hole.pos());
if hole.removed() <= hole.get(parent) { break }
hole.move_to(parent);
}
// Hole will be unconditionally filled here; panic or not!
}
}
}

7.2 Poisoning
Although all unsafe code must ensure it has minimal exception safety, not all types ensure
maximal exception safety. Even if the type does, your code may ascribe additional meaning
to it. For instance, an integer is certainly exception-safe, but has no semantics on its own.
It's possible that code that panics could fail to correctly update the integer, producing an
inconsistent program state.
This is usually fine, because anything that witnesses an exception is about to get destroyed.
For instance, if you send a Vec to another thread and that thread panics, it doesn't matter if
the Vec is in a weird state. It will be dropped and go away forever. However some types are
especially good at smuggling values across the panic boundary.
These types may choose to explicitly poison themselves if they witness a panic. Poisoning
doesn't entail anything in particular. Generally it just means preventing normal usage from
proceeding. The most notable example of this is the standard library's Mutex type. A Mutex
will poison itself if one of its MutexGuards (the thing it returns when a lock is obtained) is
dropped during a panic. Any future attempts to lock the Mutex will return an Err or panic.

84
Mutex poisons not for true safety in the sense that Rust normally cares about. It poisons as
a safety-guard against blindly using the data that comes out of a Mutex that has witnessed
a panic while locked. The data in such a Mutex was likely in the middle of being modified,
and as such may be in an inconsistent or incomplete state. It is important to note that one
cannot violate memory safety with such a type if it is correctly written. After all, it must be
minimally exception-safe!
However if the Mutex contained, say, a BinaryHeap that does not actually have the heap
property, it's unlikely that any code that uses it will do what the author intended. As such,
the program should not proceed normally. Still, if you're double-plus-sure that you can do
something with the value, the Mutex exposes a method to get the lock anyway. It is safe, after
all. Just maybe nonsense.

85
Chapter 8

Concurrency and Parallelism

Rust as a language doesn't really have an opinion on how to do concurrency or parallelism.

The standard library exposes OS threads and blocking sys-calls because everyone has those,
and they're uniform enough that you can provide an abstraction over them in a relatively
uncontroversial way. Message passing, green threads, and async APIs are all diverse enough
that any abstraction over them tends to involve trade-offs that we weren't willing to commit
to for 1.0.
However the way Rust models concurrency makes it relatively easy to design your own
concurrency paradigm as a library and have everyone else's code Just Work with yours. Just
require the right lifetimes and Send and Sync where appropriate and you're off to the races.
Or rather, off to the... not... having... races.

8.1 Data Races and Race Conditions

Safe Rust guarantees an absence of data races, which are defined as:
• two or more threads concurrently accessing a location of memory
• one or more of them is a write
• one or more of them is unsynchronized
A data race has Undefined Behavior, and is therefore impossible to perform in Safe Rust.
Data races are mostly prevented through Rust's ownership system: it's impossible to alias
a mutable reference, so it's impossible to perform a data race. Interior mutability makes
this more complicated, which is largely why we have the Send and Sync traits (see the next
section for more on this).
However Rust does not prevent general race conditions.
This is mathematically impossible in situations where you do not control the scheduler, which
is true for the normal OS environment. If you do control preemption, it can be possible to
prevent general races - this technique is used by frameworks such as RTIC. However, actually
having control over scheduling is a very uncommon case.
For this reason, it is considered ”safe” for Rust to get deadlocked or do something nonsensical
with incorrect synchronization: this is known as a general race condition or resource race.
Obviously such a program isn't very good, but Rust of course cannot prevent all logic errors.

86
In any case, a race condition cannot violate memory safety in a Rust program on its own. Only
in conjunction with some other unsafe code can a race condition actually violate memory
safety. For instance, a correct program looks like this:
use std::thread;
use std::sync::atomic::{AtomicUsize, Ordering};
use std::sync::Arc;

let data = vec![1, 2, 3, 4];

// Arc so that the memory the AtomicUsize is stored in still exists for
// the other thread to increment, even if we completely finish executing
// before it. Rust won't compile the program without it, because of the
// lifetime requirements of thread::spawn!
let idx = Arc::new(AtomicUsize::new(0));
let other_idx = idx.clone();

// `move` captures other_idx by-value, moving it into this thread

thread::spawn(move || {
// It's ok to mutate idx because this value
// is an atomic, so it can't cause a Data Race.
other_idx.fetch_add(10, Ordering::SeqCst);
});

// Index with the value loaded from the atomic. This is safe because we
// read the atomic memory only once, and then pass a copy of that value
// to the Vec's indexing implementation. This indexing will be correctly
// bounds checked, and there's no chance of the value getting changed
// in the middle. However our program may panic if the thread we spawned
// managed to increment before this ran. A race condition because
↪ correct
// program execution (panicking is rarely correct) depends on order of
// thread execution.
println!("{}", data[idx.load(Ordering::SeqCst)]);
We can cause a data race if we instead do the bound check in advance, and then unsafely
access the data with an unchecked value:
use std::thread;
use std::sync::atomic::{AtomicUsize, Ordering};
use std::sync::Arc;

let data = vec![1, 2, 3, 4];

let idx = Arc::new(AtomicUsize::new(0));

let other_idx = idx.clone();

// `move` captures other_idx by-value, moving it into this thread

thread::spawn(move || {
// It's ok to mutate idx because this value
// is an atomic, so it can't cause a Data Race.
other_idx.fetch_add(10, Ordering::SeqCst);
});

87
if idx.load(Ordering::SeqCst) < data.len() {
unsafe {
// Incorrectly loading the idx after we did the bounds check.
// It could have changed. This is a race condition, *and
↪ dangerous*
// because we decided to do `get_unchecked`, which is `unsafe`.
println!("{}", data.get_unchecked(idx.load(Ordering::SeqCst)));
}
}

8.2 Send and Sync

Not everything obeys inherited mutability, though. Some types allow you to have multiple
aliases of a location in memory while mutating it. Unless these types use synchronization to
manage this access, they are absolutely not thread-safe. Rust captures this through the Send
and Sync traits.
• A type is Send if it is safe to send it to another thread.
• A type is Sync if it is safe to share between threads (T is Sync if and only if &T is Send).
Send and Sync are fundamental to Rust's concurrency story. As such, a substantial amount
of special tooling exists to make them work right. First and foremost, they're unsafe traits.
This means that they are unsafe to implement, and other unsafe code can assume that they
are correctly implemented. Since they're marker traits (they have no associated items like
methods), correctly implemented simply means that they have the intrinsic properties an
implementor should have. Incorrectly implementing Send or Sync can cause Undefined
Behavior.
Send and Sync are also automatically derived traits. This means that, unlike every other
trait, if a type is composed entirely of Send or Sync types, then it is Send or Sync. Almost all
primitives are Send and Sync, and as a consequence pretty much all types you'll ever interact
with are Send and Sync.
Major exceptions include:
• raw pointers are neither Send nor Sync (because they have no safety guards).
• UnsafeCell isn't Sync (and therefore Cell and RefCell aren't).
• Rc isn't Send or Sync (because the refcount is shared and unsynchronized).
Rc and UnsafeCell are very fundamentally not thread-safe: they enable unsynchronized
shared mutable state. However raw pointers are, strictly speaking, marked as thread-unsafe
as more of a lint. Doing anything useful with a raw pointer requires dereferencing it, which
is already unsafe. In that sense, one could argue that it would be ”fine” for them to be marked
as thread safe.
However it's important that they aren't thread-safe to prevent types that contain them from
being automatically marked as thread-safe. These types have non-trivial untracked ownership,
and it's unlikely that their author was necessarily thinking hard about thread safety. In the
case of Rc, we have a nice example of a type that contains a *mut that is definitely not
thread-safe.
Types that aren't automatically derived can simply implement them if desired:

88
struct MyBox(*mut u8);

unsafe impl Send for MyBox {}

unsafe impl Sync for MyBox {}
In the incredibly rare case that a type is inappropriately automatically derived to be Send or
Sync, then one can also unimplement Send and Sync:

// I have some magic semantics for some synchronization primitive!

struct SpecialThreadToken(u8);

impl !Send for SpecialThreadToken {}

impl !Sync for SpecialThreadToken {}
Note that in and of itself it is impossible to incorrectly derive Send and Sync. Only types
that are ascribed special meaning by other unsafe code can possibly cause trouble by being
incorrectly Send or Sync.
Most uses of raw pointers should be encapsulated behind a sufficient abstraction that Send
and Sync can be derived. For instance all of Rust's standard collections are Send and Sync
(when they contain Send and Sync types) in spite of their pervasive use of raw pointers to
manage allocations and complex ownership. Similarly, most iterators into these collections
are Send and Sync because they largely behave like an & or &mut into the collection.

Example
Box is implemented as its own special intrinsic type by the compiler for various reasons, but
we can implement something with similar-ish behavior ourselves to see an example of when
it is sound to implement Send and Sync. Let's call it a Carton.
We start by writing code to take a value allocated on the stack and transfer it to the heap.
use std::{
mem::{align_of, size_of},
ptr,
cmp::max,
};

struct Carton<T>(ptr::NonNull<T>);

impl<T> Carton<T> {
pub fn new(value: T) -> Self {
// Allocate enough memory on the heap to store one T.
assert_ne!(size_of::<T>(), 0, "Zero-sized types are out of the
↪ scope of this example");
let mut memptr: *mut T = ptr::null_mut();
unsafe {
let ret = libc::posix_memalign(
(&mut memptr as *mut *mut T).cast(),
max(align_of::<T>(), size_of::<usize>()),
size_of::<T>()
);

89
 assert_eq!(ret, 0, "Failed to allocate or invalid
↪ alignment");
};

// NonNull is just a wrapper that enforces that the pointer

↪ isn't null.
let ptr = {
// Safety: memptr is dereferenceable because we created it
↪ from a
// reference and have exclusive access.
ptr::NonNull::new(memptr)
.expect("Guaranteed non-null if posix_memalign returns
↪ 0")
};

// Move value from the stack to the location we allocated on the

↪ heap.
unsafe {
// Safety: If non-null, posix_memalign gives us a ptr that
↪ is valid
// for writes and properly aligned.
ptr.as_ptr().write(value);
}

Self(ptr)
}
}
This isn't very useful, because once our users give us a value they have no way to access it.
Box implements Deref and DerefMut so that you can access the inner value. Let's do that.
use std::ops::{Deref, DerefMut};

impl<T> Deref for Carton<T> {

type Target = T;

fn deref(&self) -> &Self::Target {

unsafe {
// Safety: The pointer is aligned, initialized, and
↪ dereferenceable
// by the logic in [`Self::new`]. We require readers to
↪ borrow the
// Carton, and the lifetime of the return value is elided
↪ to the
// lifetime of the input. This means the borrow checker
↪ will
// enforce that no one can mutate the contents of the
↪ Carton until
// the reference returned is dropped.
self.0.as_ref()
}
}

90
}

impl<T> DerefMut for Carton<T> {

fn deref_mut(&mut self) -> &mut Self::Target {
unsafe {
// Safety: The pointer is aligned, initialized, and
↪ dereferenceable
// by the logic in [`Self::new`]. We require writers to
↪ mutably
// borrow the Carton, and the lifetime of the return value
↪ is
// elided to the lifetime of the input. This means the
↪ borrow
// checker will enforce that no one else can access the
↪ contents
// of the Carton until the mutable reference returned is
↪ dropped.
self.0.as_mut()
}
}
}
Finally, let's think about whether our Carton is Send and Sync. Something can safely be Send
unless it shares mutable state with something else without enforcing exclusive access to it.
Each Carton has a unique pointer, so we're good.
// Safety: No one besides us has the raw pointer, so we can safely
↪ transfer the
// Carton to another thread if T can be safely transferred.
unsafe impl<T> Send for Carton<T> where T: Send {}
What about Sync? For Carton to be Sync we have to enforce that you can't write to something
stored in a &Carton while that same something could be read or written to from another
&Carton. Since you need an &mut Carton to write to the pointer, and the borrow checker
enforces that mutable references must be exclusive, there are no soundness issues making
Carton sync either.
// Safety: Since there exists a public way to go from a `&Carton<T>` to
↪ a `&T`
// in an unsynchronized fashion (such as `Deref`), then `Carton<T>`
↪ can't be
// `Sync` if `T` isn't.
// Conversely, `Carton` itself does not use any interior mutability
↪ whatsoever:
// all the mutations are performed through an exclusive reference
↪ (`&mut`). This
// means it suffices that `T` be `Sync` for `Carton<T>` to be `Sync`:
unsafe impl<T> Sync for Carton<T> where T: Sync {}
When we assert our type is Send and Sync we usually need to enforce that every contained
type is Send and Sync. When writing custom types that behave like standard library types
we can assert that we have the same requirements. For example, the following code asserts
that a Carton is Send if the same sort of Box would be Send, which in this case is the same as

91
saying T is Send.
unsafe impl<T> Send for Carton<T> where Box<T>: Send {}
Right now Carton<T> has a memory leak, as it never frees the memory it allocates. Once we
fix that we have a new requirement we have to ensure we meet to be Send: we need to know
free can be called on a pointer that was yielded by an allocation done on another thread.
We can check this is true in the docs for libc::free.
impl<T> Drop for Carton<T> {
fn drop(&mut self) {
unsafe {
libc::free(self.0.as_ptr().cast());
}
}
}
A nice example where this does not happen is with a MutexGuard: notice how it is not
Send. The implementation of MutexGuard uses libraries that require you to ensure you
don't try to free a lock that you acquired in a different thread. If you were able to Send a
MutexGuard to another thread the destructor would run in the thread you sent it to, violating
the requirement. MutexGuard can still be Sync because all you can send to another thread is
an &MutexGuard and dropping a reference does nothing.
TODO: better explain what can or can't be Send or Sync. Sufficient to appeal only to data
races?

8.3 Atomics
Rust pretty blatantly just inherits the memory model for atomics from C++20. This is not due
to this model being particularly excellent or easy to understand. Indeed, this model is quite
complex and known to have several flaws. Rather, it is a pragmatic concession to the fact
that everyone is pretty bad at modeling atomics. At very least, we can benefit from existing
tooling and research around the C/C++ memory model. (You'll often see this model referred
to as ”C/C++11” or just ”C11”. C just copies the C++ memory model; and C++11 was the first
version of the model but it has received some bugfixes since then.)
Trying to fully explain the model in this book is fairly hopeless. It's defined in terms of
madness-inducing causality graphs that require a full book to properly understand in a
practical way. If you want all the nitty-gritty details, you should check out the C++ specification.
Still, we'll try to cover the basics and some of the problems Rust developers face.
The C++ memory model is fundamentally about trying to bridge the gap between the semantics
we want, the optimizations compilers want, and the inconsistent chaos our hardware wants.
We would like to just write programs and have them do exactly what we said but, you know,
fast. Wouldn't that be great?

Compiler Reordering
Compilers fundamentally want to be able to do all sorts of complicated transformations to
reduce data dependencies and eliminate dead code. In particular, they may radically change
the actual order of events, or make events never occur! If we write something like:

92
x = 1;
y = 3;
x = 2;
The compiler may conclude that it would be best if your program did:
x = 2;
y = 3;
This has inverted the order of events and completely eliminated one event. From a single-
threaded perspective this is completely unobservable: after all the statements have executed
we are in exactly the same state. But if our program is multi-threaded, we may have been
relying on x to actually be assigned to 1 before y was assigned. We would like the compiler to
be able to make these kinds of optimizations, because they can seriously improve performance.
On the other hand, we'd also like to be able to depend on our program doing the thing we said.

Hardware Reordering
On the other hand, even if the compiler totally understood what we wanted and respected
our wishes, our hardware might instead get us in trouble. Trouble comes from CPUs in the
form of memory hierarchies. There is indeed a global shared memory space somewhere in
your hardware, but from the perspective of each CPU core it is so very far away and so very
slow. Each CPU would rather work with its local cache of the data and only go through all
the anguish of talking to shared memory only when it doesn't actually have that memory in
cache.
After all, that's the whole point of the cache, right? If every read from the cache had to run
back to shared memory to double check that it hadn't changed, what would the point be?
The end result is that the hardware doesn't guarantee that events that occur in some order
on one thread, occur in the same order on another thread. To guarantee this, we must issue
special instructions to the CPU telling it to be a bit less smart.
For instance, say we convince the compiler to emit this logic:
initial state: x = 0, y = 1

THREAD 1 THREAD 2
y = 3; if x == 1 {
x = 1; y *= 2;
}
Ideally this program has 2 possible final states:
• y = 3: (thread 2 did the check before thread 1 completed)
• y = 6: (thread 2 did the check after thread 1 completed)
However there's a third potential state that the hardware enables:
• y = 2: (thread 2 saw x = 1, but not y = 3, and then overwrote y = 3)
It's worth noting that different kinds of CPU provide different guarantees. It is common to
separate hardware into two categories: strongly-ordered and weakly-ordered. Most notably
x86/64 provides strong ordering guarantees, while ARM provides weak ordering guarantees.
This has two consequences for concurrent programming:

93
 • Asking for stronger guarantees on strongly-ordered hardware may be cheap or even free
because they already provide strong guarantees unconditionally. Weaker guarantees
may only yield performance wins on weakly-ordered hardware.
• Asking for guarantees that are too weak on strongly-ordered hardware is more likely to
happen to work, even though your program is strictly incorrect. If possible, concurrent
algorithms should be tested on weakly-ordered hardware.

Data Accesses
The C++ memory model attempts to bridge the gap by allowing us to talk about the causality
of our program. Generally, this is by establishing a happens before relationship between parts
of the program and the threads that are running them. This gives the hardware and compiler
room to optimize the program more aggressively where a strict happens-before relationship
isn't established, but forces them to be more careful where one is established. The way we
communicate these relationships are through data accesses and atomic accesses.
Data accesses are the bread-and-butter of the programming world. They are fundamentally
unsynchronized and compilers are free to aggressively optimize them. In particular, data
accesses are free to be reordered by the compiler on the assumption that the program is
single-threaded. The hardware is also free to propagate the changes made in data accesses
to other threads as lazily and inconsistently as it wants. Most critically, data accesses are
how data races happen. Data accesses are very friendly to the hardware and compiler, but as
we've seen they offer awful semantics to try to write synchronized code with. Actually, that's
too weak.
It is literally impossible to write correct synchronized code using only data accesses.
Atomic accesses are how we tell the hardware and compiler that our program is multi-
threaded. Each atomic access can be marked with an ordering that specifies what kind of
relationship it establishes with other accesses. In practice, this boils down to telling the
compiler and hardware certain things they can't do. For the compiler, this largely revolves
around re-ordering of instructions. For the hardware, this largely revolves around how
writes are propagated to other threads. The set of orderings Rust exposes are:
• Sequentially Consistent (SeqCst)
• Release
• Acquire
• Relaxed
(Note: We explicitly do not expose the C++ consume ordering)
TODO: negative reasoning vs positive reasoning? TODO: ”can't forget to synchronize”

Sequentially Consistent
Sequentially Consistent is the most powerful of all, implying the restrictions of all other
orderings. Intuitively, a sequentially consistent operation cannot be reordered: all accesses
on one thread that happen before and after a SeqCst access stay before and after it. A data-
race-free program that uses only sequentially consistent atomics and data accesses has the
very nice property that there is a single global execution of the program's instructions that
all threads agree on. This execution is also particularly nice to reason about: it's just an
interleaving of each thread's individual executions. This does not hold if you start using the
weaker atomic orderings.

94
The relative developer-friendliness of sequential consistency doesn't come for free. Even on
strongly-ordered platforms sequential consistency involves emitting memory fences.
In practice, sequential consistency is rarely necessary for program correctness. However
sequential consistency is definitely the right choice if you're not confident about the other
memory orders. Having your program run a bit slower than it needs to is certainly better
than it running incorrectly! It's also mechanically trivial to downgrade atomic operations
to have a weaker consistency later on. Just change SeqCst to Relaxed and you're done! Of
course, proving that this transformation is correct is a whole other matter.

Acquire-Release
Acquire and Release are largely intended to be paired. Their names hint at their use case:
they're perfectly suited for acquiring and releasing locks, and ensuring that critical sections
don't overlap.
Intuitively, an acquire access ensures that every access after it stays after it. However op-
erations that occur before an acquire are free to be reordered to occur after it. Similarly, a
release access ensures that every access before it stays before it. However operations that
occur after a release are free to be reordered to occur before it.
When thread A releases a location in memory and then thread B subsequently acquires
the same location in memory, causality is established. Every write (including non-atomic
and relaxed atomic writes) that happened before A's release will be observed by B after
its acquisition. However no causality is established with any other threads. Similarly, no
causality is established if A and B access different locations in memory.
Basic use of release-acquire is therefore simple: you acquire a location of memory to begin
the critical section, and then release that location to end it. For instance, a simple spinlock
might look like:
use std::sync::Arc;
use std::sync::atomic::{AtomicBool, Ordering};
use std::thread;

fn main() {
let lock = Arc::new(AtomicBool::new(false)); // value answers "am I
↪ locked?"

// ... distribute lock to threads somehow ...

// Try to acquire the lock by setting it to true

while lock.compare_and_swap(false, true, Ordering::Acquire) { }
// broke out of the loop, so we successfully acquired the lock!

// ... scary data accesses ...

// ok we're done, release the lock

lock.store(false, Ordering::Release);
}
On strongly-ordered platforms most accesses have release or acquire semantics, making
release and acquire often totally free. This is not the case on weakly-ordered platforms.

95
Relaxed
Relaxed accesses are the absolute weakest. They can be freely re-ordered and provide no
happens-before relationship. Still, relaxed operations are still atomic. That is, they don't
count as data accesses and any read-modify-write operations done to them occur atomically.
Relaxed operations are appropriate for things that you definitely want to happen, but don't
particularly otherwise care about. For instance, incrementing a counter can be safely done
by multiple threads using a relaxed fetch_add if you're not using the counter to synchronize
any other accesses.
There's rarely a benefit in making an operation relaxed on strongly-ordered platforms, since
they usually provide release-acquire semantics anyway. However relaxed operations can be
cheaper on weakly-ordered platforms.

96
Chapter 9

Example: Implementing Vec

To bring everything together, we're going to write std::Vec from scratch. We will limit
ourselves to stable Rust. In particular we won't use any intrinsics that could make our
code a little bit nicer or efficient because intrinsics are permanently unstable. Although
many intrinsics do become stabilized elsewhere (std::ptr and std::mem consist of many
intrinsics).
Ultimately this means our implementation may not take advantage of all possible optimiza-
tions, though it will be by no means naive. We will definitely get into the weeds over nitty-gritty
details, even when the problem doesn't really merit it.
You wanted advanced. We're gonna go advanced.

9.1 Layout
First off, we need to come up with the struct layout. A Vec has three parts: a pointer to the
allocation, the size of the allocation, and the number of elements that have been initialized.
Naively, this means we just want this design:
pub struct Vec<T> {
ptr: *mut T,
cap: usize,
len: usize,
}
And indeed this would compile. Unfortunately, it would be too strict. The compiler will give
us too strict variance. So a &Vec<&'static str> couldn't be used where a &Vec<&'a str>
was expected. See the chapter on ownership and lifetimes for all the details on variance.
As we saw in the ownership chapter, the standard library uses Unique<T> in place of *mut
T when it has a raw pointer to an allocation that it owns. Unique is unstable, so we'd like to
not use it if possible, though.
As a recap, Unique is a wrapper around a raw pointer that declares that:
• We are covariant over T

97
 • We may own a value of type T (this is not relevant for our example here, but see the
chapter on PhantomData on why the real std::vec::Vec<T> needs this)
• We are Send/Sync if T is Send/Sync
• Our pointer is never null (so Option<Vec<T>> is null-pointer-optimized)
We can implement all of the above requirements in stable Rust. To do this, instead of using
Unique<T> we will use NonNull<T>, another wrapper around a raw pointer, which gives us
two of the above properties, namely it is covariant over T and is declared to never be null. By
implementing Send/Sync if T is, we get the same results as using Unique<T>:
use std::ptr::NonNull;

pub struct Vec<T> {

ptr: NonNull<T>,
cap: usize,
len: usize,
}

unsafe impl<T: Send> Send for Vec<T> {}

unsafe impl<T: Sync> Sync for Vec<T> {}

9.2 Allocating Memory

Using NonNull throws a wrench in an important feature of Vec (and indeed all of the std
collections): creating an empty Vec doesn't actually allocate at all. This is not the same as
allocating a zero-sized memory block, which is not allowed by the global allocator (it results
in undefined behavior!). So if we can't allocate, but also can't put a null pointer in ptr, what
do we do in Vec::new? Well, we just put some other garbage in there!
This is perfectly fine because we already have cap == 0 as our sentinel for no allocation.
We don't even need to handle it specially in almost any code because we usually need
to check if cap > len or len > 0 anyway. The recommended Rust value to put here is
mem::align_of::<T>(). NonNull provides a convenience for this: NonNull::dangling().
There are quite a few places where we'll want to use dangling because there's no real allo-
cation to talk about but null would make the compiler do bad things.
So:
use std::mem;

impl<T> Vec<T> {
pub fn new() -> Self {
assert!(mem::size_of::<T>() != 0, "We're not ready to handle
↪ ZSTs");
Vec {
ptr: NonNull::dangling(),
len: 0,
cap: 0,
}
}
}
I slipped in that assert there because zero-sized types will require some special handling

98
throughout our code, and I want to defer the issue for now. Without this assert, some of our
early drafts will do some Very Bad Things.
Next we need to figure out what to actually do when we do want space. For that, we use the
global allocation functions alloc, realloc, and dealloc which are available in stable Rust
in std::alloc. These functions are expected to become deprecated in favor of the methods
of std::alloc::Global after this type is stabilized.
We'll also need a way to handle out-of-memory (OOM) conditions. The standard library pro-
vides a function alloc::handle_alloc_error, which will abort the program in a platform-
specific manner. The reason we abort and don't panic is because unwinding can cause
allocations to happen, and that seems like a bad thing to do when your allocator just came
back with ”hey I don't have any more memory”.
Of course, this is a bit silly since most platforms don't actually run out of memory in a
conventional way. Your operating system will probably kill the application by another means
if you legitimately start using up all the memory. The most likely way we'll trigger OOM is
by just asking for ludicrous quantities of memory at once (e.g. half the theoretical address
space). As such it's probably fine to panic and nothing bad will happen. Still, we're trying to
be like the standard library as much as possible, so we'll just kill the whole program.
Okay, now we can write growing. Roughly, we want to have this logic:
if cap == 0:
allocate()
cap = 1
else:
reallocate()
cap *= 2
But Rust's only supported allocator API is so low level that we'll need to do a fair bit of extra
work. We also need to guard against some special conditions that can occur with really large
allocations or empty allocations.
In particular, ptr::offset will cause us a lot of trouble, because it has the semantics of
LLVM's GEP inbounds instruction. If you're fortunate enough to not have dealt with this
instruction, here's the basic story with GEP: alias analysis, alias analysis, alias analysis. It's
super important to an optimizing compiler to be able to reason about data dependencies and
aliasing.
As a simple example, consider the following fragment of code:
*x *= 7;
*y *= 3;
If the compiler can prove that x and y point to different locations in memory, the two opera-
tions can in theory be executed in parallel (by e.g. loading them into different registers and
working on them independently). However the compiler can't do this in general because if
x and y point to the same location in memory, the operations need to be done to the same
value, and they can't just be merged afterwards.
When you use GEP inbounds, you are specifically telling LLVM that the offsets you're about to
do are within the bounds of a single ”allocated” entity. The ultimate payoff being that LLVM
can assume that if two pointers are known to point to two disjoint objects, all the offsets of
those pointers are also known to not alias (because you won't just end up in some random

99
place in memory). LLVM is heavily optimized to work with GEP offsets, and inbounds offsets
are the best of all, so it's important that we use them as much as possible.
So that's what GEP's about, how can it cause us trouble?
The first problem is that we index into arrays with unsigned integers, but GEP (and as a
consequence ptr::offset) takes a signed integer. This means that half of the seemingly
valid indices into an array will overflow GEP and actually go in the wrong direction! As such
we must limit all allocations to isize::MAX elements. This actually means we only need to
worry about byte-sized objects, because e.g. > isize::MAX u16s will truly exhaust all of the
system's memory. However in order to avoid subtle corner cases where someone reinterprets
some array of < isize::MAX objects as bytes, std limits all allocations to isize::MAX bytes.
On all 64-bit targets that Rust currently supports we're artificially limited to significantly less
than all 64 bits of the address space (modern x64 platforms only expose 48-bit addressing),
so we can rely on just running out of memory first. However on 32-bit targets, particularly
those with extensions to use more of the address space (PAE x86 or x32), it's theoretically
possible to successfully allocate more than isize::MAX bytes of memory.
However since this is a tutorial, we're not going to be particularly optimal here, and just
unconditionally check, rather than use clever platform-specific cfgs.
The other corner-case we need to worry about is empty allocations. There will be two kinds
of empty allocations we need to worry about: cap = 0 for all T, and cap > 0 for zero-sized
types.
These cases are tricky because they come down to what LLVM means by ”allocated”. LLVM's
notion of an allocation is significantly more abstract than how we usually use it. Because
LLVM needs to work with different languages' semantics and custom allocators, it can't really
intimately understand allocation. Instead, the main idea behind allocation is ”doesn't overlap
with other stuff”. That is, heap allocations, stack allocations, and globals don't randomly
overlap. Yep, it's about alias analysis. As such, Rust can technically play a bit fast and loose
with the notion of an allocation as long as it's consistent.
Getting back to the empty allocation case, there are a couple of places where we want to offset
by 0 as a consequence of generic code. The question is then: is it consistent to do so? For
zero-sized types, we have concluded that it is indeed consistent to do a GEP inbounds offset
by an arbitrary number of elements. This is a runtime no-op because every element takes up
no space, and it's fine to pretend that there's infinite zero-sized types allocated at 0x01. No
allocator will ever allocate that address, because they won't allocate 0x00 and they generally
allocate to some minimal alignment higher than a byte. Also generally the whole first page of
memory is protected from being allocated anyway (a whole 4k, on many platforms).
However what about for positive-sized types? That one's a bit trickier. In principle, you can
argue that offsetting by 0 gives LLVM no information: either there's an element before the
address or after it, but it can't know which. However we've chosen to conservatively assume
that it may do bad things. As such we will guard against this case explicitly.
Phew
Ok with all the nonsense out of the way, let's actually allocate some memory:
use std::alloc::{self, Layout};

impl<T> Vec<T> {
fn grow(&mut self) {

100
 let (new_cap, new_layout) = if self.cap == 0 {
(1, Layout::array::<T>(1).unwrap())
} else {
// This can't overflow since self.cap <= isize::MAX.
let new_cap = 2 * self.cap;

// `Layout::array` checks that the number of bytes is <=

↪ usize::MAX,
// but this is redundant since old_layout.size() <=
↪ isize::MAX,
// so the `unwrap` should never fail.
let new_layout = Layout::array::<T>(new_cap).unwrap();
(new_cap, new_layout)
};

// Ensure that the new allocation doesn't exceed `isize::MAX`

↪ bytes.
assert!(new_layout.size() <= isize::MAX as usize, "Allocation
↪ too large");

let new_ptr = if self.cap == 0 {

unsafe { alloc::alloc(new_layout) }
} else {
let old_layout = Layout::array::<T>(self.cap).unwrap();
let old_ptr = self.ptr.as_ptr() as *mut u8;
unsafe { alloc::realloc(old_ptr, old_layout,
↪ new_layout.size()) }
};

// If allocation fails, `new_ptr` will be null, in which case we

↪ abort.
self.ptr = match NonNull::new(new_ptr as *mut T) {
Some(p) => p,
None => alloc::handle_alloc_error(new_layout),
};
self.cap = new_cap;
}
}

9.3 Push and Pop

Alright. We can initialize. We can allocate. Let's actually implement some functionality! Let's
start with push. All it needs to do is check if we're full to grow, unconditionally write to the
next index, and then increment our length.
To do the write we have to be careful not to evaluate the memory we want to write to. At
worst, it's truly uninitialized memory from the allocator. At best it's the bits of some old value
we popped off. Either way, we can't just index to the memory and dereference it, because
that will evaluate the memory as a valid instance of T. Worse, foo[idx] = x will try to call
drop on the old value of foo[idx]!

101
The correct way to do this is with ptr::write, which just blindly overwrites the target
address with the bits of the value we provide. No evaluation involved.
For push, if the old len (before push was called) is 0, then we want to write to the 0th index.
So we should offset by the old len.
pub fn push(&mut self, elem: T) {
if self.len == self.cap { self.grow(); }

unsafe {
ptr::write(self.ptr.as_ptr().add(self.len), elem);
}

// Can't fail, we'll OOM first.

self.len += 1;
}
Easy! How about pop? Although this time the index we want to access is initialized, Rust
won't just let us dereference the location of memory to move the value out, because that
would leave the memory uninitialized! For this we need ptr::read, which just copies out
the bits from the target address and interprets it as a value of type T. This will leave the
memory at this address logically uninitialized, even though there is in fact a perfectly good
instance of T there.
For pop, if the old len is 1, for example, we want to read out of the 0th index. So we should
offset by the new len.
pub fn pop(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
if self.len == 0 {
None
} else {
self.len -= 1;
unsafe {
Some(ptr::read(self.ptr.as_ptr().add(self.len)))
}
}
}

9.4 Deallocating
Next we should implement Drop so that we don't massively leak tons of resources. The easiest
way is to just call pop until it yields None, and then deallocate our buffer. Note that calling
pop is unneeded if T: !Drop. In theory we can ask Rust if T needs_drop and omit the calls
to pop. However in practice LLVM is really good at removing simple side-effect free code like
this, so I wouldn't bother unless you notice it's not being stripped (in this case it is).
We must not call alloc::dealloc when self.cap == 0, as in this case we haven't actually
allocated any memory.
impl<T> Drop for Vec<T> {
fn drop(&mut self) {
if self.cap != 0 {
while let Some(_) = self.pop() { }

102
 let layout = Layout::array::<T>(self.cap).unwrap();
unsafe {
alloc::dealloc(self.ptr.as_ptr() as *mut u8, layout);
}
}
}
}

9.5 Deref
Alright! We've got a decent minimal stack implemented. We can push, we can pop, and we
can clean up after ourselves. However there's a whole mess of functionality we'd reasonably
want. In particular, we have a proper array, but none of the slice functionality. That's actually
pretty easy to solve: we can implement Deref<Target=[T]>. This will magically make our
Vec coerce to, and behave like, a slice in all sorts of conditions.
All we need is slice::from_raw_parts. It will correctly handle empty slices for us. Later
once we set up zero-sized type support it will also Just Work for those too.
use std::ops::Deref;

impl<T> Deref for Vec<T> {

type Target = [T];
fn deref(&self) -> &[T] {
unsafe {
std::slice::from_raw_parts(self.ptr.as_ptr(), self.len)
}
}
}
And let's do DerefMut too:
use std::ops::DerefMut;

impl<T> DerefMut for Vec<T> {

fn deref_mut(&mut self) -> &mut [T] {
unsafe {
std::slice::from_raw_parts_mut(self.ptr.as_ptr(), self.len)
}
}
}
Now we have len, first, last, indexing, slicing, sorting, iter, iter_mut, and all other sorts
of bells and whistles provided by slice. Sweet!

9.6 Insert and Remove

Something not provided by slice is insert and remove, so let's do those next.
Insert needs to shift all the elements at the target index to the right by one. To do this we need
to use ptr::copy, which is our version of C's memmove. This copies some chunk of memory

103
from one location to another, correctly handling the case where the source and destination
overlap (which will definitely happen here).
If we insert at index i, we want to shift the [i .. len] to [i+1 .. len+1] using the old
len.
pub fn insert(&mut self, index: usize, elem: T) {
// Note: `<=` because it's valid to insert after everything
// which would be equivalent to push.
assert!(index <= self.len, "index out of bounds");
if self.len == self.cap { self.grow(); }

unsafe {
// ptr::copy(src, dest, len): "copy from src to dest len elems"
ptr::copy(
self.ptr.as_ptr().add(index),
self.ptr.as_ptr().add(index + 1),
self.len - index,
);
ptr::write(self.ptr.as_ptr().add(index), elem);
}

self.len += 1;
}
Remove behaves in the opposite manner. We need to shift all the elements from [i+1 ..
len + 1] to [i .. len] using the new len.
pub fn remove(&mut self, index: usize) -> T {
// Note: `<` because it's *not* valid to remove after everything
assert!(index < self.len, "index out of bounds");
unsafe {
self.len -= 1;
let result = ptr::read(self.ptr.as_ptr().add(index));
ptr::copy(
self.ptr.as_ptr().add(index + 1),
self.ptr.as_ptr().add(index),
self.len - index,
);
result
}
}

9.7 IntoIter
Let's move on to writing iterators. iter and iter_mut have already been written for us
thanks to The Magic of Deref. However there's two interesting iterators that Vec provides
that slices can't: into_iter and drain.
IntoIter consumes the Vec by-value, and can consequently yield its elements by-value. In
order to enable this, IntoIter needs to take control of Vec's allocation.
IntoIter needs to be DoubleEnded as well, to enable reading from both ends. Reading from

104
the back could just be implemented as calling pop, but reading from the front is harder. We
could call remove(0) but that would be insanely expensive. Instead we're going to just use
ptr::read to copy values out of either end of the Vec without mutating the buffer at all.
To do this we're going to use a very common C idiom for array iteration. We'll make two
pointers; one that points to the start of the array, and one that points to one-element past the
end. When we want an element from one end, we'll read out the value pointed to at that end
and move the pointer over by one. When the two pointers are equal, we know we're done.
Note that the order of read and offset are reversed for next and next_back For next_back
the pointer is always after the element it wants to read next, while for next the pointer is
always at the element it wants to read next. To see why this is, consider the case where every
element but one has been yielded.
The array looks like this:
S E
[X, X, X, O, X, X, X]
If E pointed directly at the element it wanted to yield next, it would be indistinguishable from
the case where there are no more elements to yield.
Although we don't actually care about it during iteration, we also need to hold onto the Vec's
allocation information in order to free it once IntoIter is dropped.
So we're going to use the following struct:
pub struct IntoIter<T> {
buf: NonNull<T>,
cap: usize,
start: *const T,
end: *const T,
}
And this is what we end up with for initialization:
impl<T> IntoIterator for Vec<T> {
type Item = T;
type IntoIter = IntoIter<T>;
fn into_iter(self) -> IntoIter<T> {
// Make sure not to drop Vec since that would free the buffer
let vec = ManuallyDrop::new(self);

// Can't destructure Vec since it's Drop

let ptr = vec.ptr;
let cap = vec.cap;
let len = vec.len;

IntoIter {
buf: ptr,
cap,
start: ptr.as_ptr(),
end: if cap == 0 {
// can't offset off this pointer, it's not allocated!
ptr.as_ptr()
} else {

105
 unsafe { ptr.as_ptr().add(len) }
},
}
}
}
Here's iterating forward:
impl<T> Iterator for IntoIter<T> {
type Item = T;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
if self.start == self.end {
None
} else {
unsafe {
let result = ptr::read(self.start);
self.start = self.start.offset(1);
Some(result)
}
}
}

fn size_hint(&self) -> (usize, Option<usize>) {

let len = (self.end as usize - self.start as usize)
/ mem::size_of::<T>();
(len, Some(len))
}
}
And here's iterating backwards.
impl<T> DoubleEndedIterator for IntoIter<T> {
fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
if self.start == self.end {
None
} else {
unsafe {
self.end = self.end.offset(-1);
Some(ptr::read(self.end))
}
}
}
}
Because IntoIter takes ownership of its allocation, it needs to implement Drop to free it.
However it also wants to implement Drop to drop any elements it contains that weren't
yielded.
impl<T> Drop for IntoIter<T> {
fn drop(&mut self) {
if self.cap != 0 {
// drop any remaining elements
for _ in &mut *self {}
let layout = Layout::array::<T>(self.cap).unwrap();

106
 unsafe {
alloc::dealloc(self.buf.as_ptr() as *mut u8, layout);
}
}
}
}

9.8 RawVec
We've actually reached an interesting situation here: we've duplicated the logic for specifying
a buffer and freeing its memory in Vec and IntoIter. Now that we've implemented it and
identified actual logic duplication, this is a good time to perform some logic compression.
We're going to abstract out the (ptr, cap) pair and give them the logic for allocating,
growing, and freeing:
struct RawVec<T> {
ptr: NonNull<T>,
cap: usize,
}

unsafe impl<T: Send> Send for RawVec<T> {}

unsafe impl<T: Sync> Sync for RawVec<T> {}

impl<T> RawVec<T> {
fn new() -> Self {
assert!(mem::size_of::<T>() != 0, "TODO: implement ZST
↪ support");
RawVec {
ptr: NonNull::dangling(),
cap: 0,
}
}

fn grow(&mut self) {
// This can't overflow because we ensure self.cap <= isize::MAX.
let new_cap = if self.cap == 0 { 1 } else { 2 * self.cap };

// Layout::array checks that the number of bytes is <=

↪ usize::MAX,
// but this is redundant since old_layout.size() <= isize::MAX,
// so the `unwrap` should never fail.
let new_layout = Layout::array::<T>(new_cap).unwrap();

// Ensure that the new allocation doesn't exceed `isize::MAX`

↪ bytes.
assert!(new_layout.size() <= isize::MAX as usize, "Allocation
↪ too large");

let new_ptr = if self.cap == 0 {

unsafe { alloc::alloc(new_layout) }

107
 } else {
let old_layout = Layout::array::<T>(self.cap).unwrap();
let old_ptr = self.ptr.as_ptr() as *mut u8;
unsafe { alloc::realloc(old_ptr, old_layout,
↪ new_layout.size()) }
};

// If allocation fails, `new_ptr` will be null, in which case we

↪ abort.
self.ptr = match NonNull::new(new_ptr as *mut T) {
Some(p) => p,
None => alloc::handle_alloc_error(new_layout),
};
self.cap = new_cap;
}
}

impl<T> Drop for RawVec<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
if self.cap != 0 {
let layout = Layout::array::<T>(self.cap).unwrap();
unsafe {
alloc::dealloc(self.ptr.as_ptr() as *mut u8, layout);
}
}
}
}
And change Vec as follows:
pub struct Vec<T> {
buf: RawVec<T>,
len: usize,
}

impl<T> Vec<T> {
fn ptr(&self) -> *mut T {
self.buf.ptr.as_ptr()
}

fn cap(&self) -> usize {

self.buf.cap
}

pub fn new() -> Self {

Vec {
buf: RawVec::new(),
len: 0,
}
}

// push/pop/insert/remove largely unchanged:

108
 // * `self.ptr.as_ptr() -> self.ptr()`
// * `self.cap -> self.cap()`
// * `self.grow() -> self.buf.grow()`
}

impl<T> Drop for Vec<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
while let Some(_) = self.pop() {}
// deallocation is handled by RawVec
}
}
And finally we can really simplify IntoIter:
pub struct IntoIter<T> {
_buf: RawVec<T>, // we don't actually care about this. Just need it
↪ to live.
start: *const T,
end: *const T,
}

// next and next_back literally unchanged since they never referred to

↪ the buf

impl<T> Drop for IntoIter<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
// only need to ensure all our elements are read;
// buffer will clean itself up afterwards.
for _ in &mut *self {}
}
}

impl<T> IntoIterator for Vec<T> {

type Item = T;
type IntoIter = IntoIter<T>;
fn into_iter(self) -> IntoIter<T> {
// need to use ptr::read to unsafely move the buf out since it's
// not Copy, and Vec implements Drop (so we can't destructure
↪ it).
let buf = unsafe { ptr::read(&self.buf) };
let len = self.len;
mem::forget(self);

IntoIter {
start: buf.ptr.as_ptr(),
end: if buf.cap == 0 {
// can't offset off of a pointer unless it's part of an
↪ allocation
buf.ptr.as_ptr()
} else {
unsafe { buf.ptr.as_ptr().add(len) }
},

109
 _buf: buf,
}
}
}
Much better.

9.9 Drain
Let's move on to Drain. Drain is largely the same as IntoIter, except that instead of consuming
the Vec, it borrows the Vec and leaves its allocation untouched. For now we'll only implement
the ”basic” full-range version.
use std::marker::PhantomData;

struct Drain<'a, T: 'a> {

// Need to bound the lifetime here, so we do it with `&'a mut
↪ Vec<T>`
// because that's semantically what we contain. We're "just" calling
// `pop()` and `remove(0)`.
vec: PhantomData<&'a mut Vec<T>>,
start: *const T,
end: *const T,
}

impl<'a, T> Iterator for Drain<'a, T> {

type Item = T;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
if self.start == self.end {
None
-- wait, this is seeming familiar. Let's do some more compression. Both IntoIter and Drain
have the exact same structure, let's just factor it out.
struct RawValIter<T> {
start: *const T,
end: *const T,
}

impl<T> RawValIter<T> {
// unsafe to construct because it has no associated lifetimes.
// This is necessary to store a RawValIter in the same struct as
// its actual allocation. OK since it's a private implementation
// detail.
unsafe fn new(slice: &[T]) -> Self {
RawValIter {
start: slice.as_ptr(),
end: if slice.len() == 0 {
// if `len = 0`, then this is not actually allocated
↪ memory.
// Need to avoid offsetting because that will give wrong
// information to LLVM via GEP.

110
 slice.as_ptr()
} else {
slice.as_ptr().add(slice.len())
}
}
}
}

// Iterator and DoubleEndedIterator impls identical to IntoIter.

And IntoIter becomes the following:
pub struct IntoIter<T> {
_buf: RawVec<T>, // we don't actually care about this. Just need it
↪ to live.
iter: RawValIter<T>,
}

impl<T> Iterator for IntoIter<T> {

type Item = T;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<T> { self.iter.next() }
fn size_hint(&self) -> (usize, Option<usize>) {
↪ self.iter.size_hint() }
}

impl<T> DoubleEndedIterator for IntoIter<T> {

fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<T> { self.iter.next_back() }
}

impl<T> Drop for IntoIter<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
for _ in &mut *self {}
}
}

impl<T> IntoIterator for Vec<T> {

type Item = T;
type IntoIter = IntoIter<T>;
fn into_iter(self) -> IntoIter<T> {
unsafe {
let iter = RawValIter::new(&self);

let buf = ptr::read(&self.buf);

mem::forget(self);

IntoIter {
iter,
_buf: buf,
}
}
}
}

111
Note that I've left a few quirks in this design to make upgrading Drain to work with arbitrary
subranges a bit easier. In particular we could have RawValIter drain itself on drop, but that
won't work right for a more complex Drain. We also take a slice to simplify Drain initialization.
Alright, now Drain is really easy:
use std::marker::PhantomData;

pub struct Drain<'a, T: 'a> {

vec: PhantomData<&'a mut Vec<T>>,
iter: RawValIter<T>,
}

impl<'a, T> Iterator for Drain<'a, T> {

type Item = T;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<T> { self.iter.next() }
fn size_hint(&self) -> (usize, Option<usize>) {
↪ self.iter.size_hint() }
}

impl<'a, T> DoubleEndedIterator for Drain<'a, T> {

fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<T> { self.iter.next_back() }
}

impl<'a, T> Drop for Drain<'a, T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
for _ in &mut *self {}
}
}

impl<T> Vec<T> {
pub fn drain(&mut self) -> Drain<T> {
let iter = unsafe { RawValIter::new(&self) };

// this is a mem::forget safety thing. If Drain is forgotten, we

↪ just
// leak the whole Vec's contents. Also we need to do this
↪ *eventually*
// anyway, so why not do it now?
self.len = 0;

Drain {
iter,
vec: PhantomData,
}
}
}
For more details on the mem::forget problem, see the section on leaks.

112
9.10 Handling Zero-Sized Types
It's time. We're going to fight the specter that is zero-sized types. Safe Rust never needs to care
about this, but Vec is very intensive on raw pointers and raw allocations, which are exactly
the two things that care about zero-sized types. We need to be careful of two things:
• The raw allocator API has undefined behavior if you pass in 0 for an allocation size.
• raw pointer offsets are no-ops for zero-sized types, which will break our C-style pointer
iterator.
Thankfully we abstracted out pointer-iterators and allocating handling into RawValIter and
RawVec respectively. How mysteriously convenient.

Allocating Zero-Sized Types

So if the allocator API doesn't support zero-sized allocations, what on earth do we store as
our allocation? NonNull::dangling() of course! Almost every operation with a ZST is a
no-op since ZSTs have exactly one value, and therefore no state needs to be considered to
store or load them. This actually extends to ptr::read and ptr::write: they won't actually
look at the pointer at all. As such we never need to change the pointer.
Note however that our previous reliance on running out of memory before overflow is no
longer valid with zero-sized types. We must explicitly guard against capacity overflow for
zero-sized types.
Due to our current architecture, all this means is writing 3 guards, one in each method of
RawVec.
impl<T> RawVec<T> {
fn new() -> Self {
// This branch should be stripped at compile time.
let cap = if mem::size_of::<T>() == 0 { usize::MAX } else { 0 };

// `NonNull::dangling()` doubles as "unallocated" and

↪ "zero-sized allocation"
RawVec {
ptr: NonNull::dangling(),
cap,
}
}

fn grow(&mut self) {
// since we set the capacity to usize::MAX when T has size 0,
// getting to here necessarily means the Vec is overfull.
assert!(mem::size_of::<T>() != 0, "capacity overflow");

let (new_cap, new_layout) = if self.cap == 0 {

(1, Layout::array::<T>(1).unwrap())
} else {
// This can't overflow because we ensure self.cap <=
↪ isize::MAX.
let new_cap = 2 * self.cap;

113
 // `Layout::array` checks that the number of bytes is <=
↪ usize::MAX,
// but this is redundant since old_layout.size() <=
↪ isize::MAX,
// so the `unwrap` should never fail.
let new_layout = Layout::array::<T>(new_cap).unwrap();
(new_cap, new_layout)
};

// Ensure that the new allocation doesn't exceed `isize::MAX`

↪ bytes.
assert!(new_layout.size() <= isize::MAX as usize, "Allocation
↪ too large");

let new_ptr = if self.cap == 0 {

unsafe { alloc::alloc(new_layout) }
} else {
let old_layout = Layout::array::<T>(self.cap).unwrap();
let old_ptr = self.ptr.as_ptr() as *mut u8;
unsafe { alloc::realloc(old_ptr, old_layout,
↪ new_layout.size()) }
};

// If allocation fails, `new_ptr` will be null, in which case we

↪ abort.
self.ptr = match NonNull::new(new_ptr as *mut T) {
Some(p) => p,
None => alloc::handle_alloc_error(new_layout),
};
self.cap = new_cap;
}
}

impl<T> Drop for RawVec<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
let elem_size = mem::size_of::<T>();

if self.cap != 0 && elem_size != 0 {

unsafe {
alloc::dealloc(
self.ptr.as_ptr() as *mut u8,
Layout::array::<T>(self.cap).unwrap(),
);
}
}
}
}
That's it. We support pushing and popping zero-sized types now. Our iterators (that aren't
provided by slice Deref) are still busted, though.

114
Iterating Zero-Sized Types
Zero-sized offsets are no-ops. This means that our current design will always initialize start
and end as the same value, and our iterators will yield nothing. The current solution to this
is to cast the pointers to integers, increment, and then cast them back:
impl<T> RawValIter<T> {
unsafe fn new(slice: &[T]) -> Self {
RawValIter {
start: slice.as_ptr(),
end: if mem::size_of::<T>() == 0 {
((slice.as_ptr() as usize) + slice.len()) as *const _
} else if slice.len() == 0 {
slice.as_ptr()
} else {
slice.as_ptr().add(slice.len())
},
}
}
}
Now we have a different bug. Instead of our iterators not running at all, our iterators now run
forever. We need to do the same trick in our iterator impls. Also, our size_hint computation
code will divide by 0 for ZSTs. Since we'll basically be treating the two pointers as if they
point to bytes, we'll just map size 0 to divide by 1. Here's what next will be:
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
if self.start == self.end {
None
} else {
unsafe {
let result = ptr::read(self.start);
self.start = if mem::size_of::<T>() == 0 {
(self.start as usize + 1) as *const _
} else {
self.start.offset(1)
};
Some(result)
}
}
}
Do you see the ”bug”? No one else did! The original author only noticed the problem when
linking to this page years later. This code is kind of dubious because abusing the iterator
pointers to be counters makes them unaligned! Our one job when using ZSTs is to keep
pointers aligned! forehead slap
Raw pointers don't need to be aligned at all times, so the basic trick of using pointers as
counters is fine, but they should definitely be aligned when passed to ptr::read! This is
possibly needless pedantry because ptr::read is a noop for a ZST, but let's be a little more
responsible and read from NonNull::dangling on the ZST path.
(Alternatively you could call read_unaligned on the ZST path. Either is fine, because either
way we're making up a value from nothing and it all compiles to doing nothing.)

115
impl<T> Iterator for RawValIter<T> {
type Item = T;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
if self.start == self.end {
None
} else {
unsafe {
if mem::size_of::<T>() == 0 {
self.start = (self.start as usize + 1) as *const _;
Some(ptr::read(NonNull::<T>::dangling().as_ptr()))
} else {
let old_ptr = self.start;
self.start = self.start.offset(1);
Some(ptr::read(old_ptr))
}
}
}
}

fn size_hint(&self) -> (usize, Option<usize>) {

let elem_size = mem::size_of::<T>();
let len = (self.end as usize - self.start as usize)
/ if elem_size == 0 { 1 } else { elem_size };
(len, Some(len))
}
}

impl<T> DoubleEndedIterator for RawValIter<T> {

fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
if self.start == self.end {
None
} else {
unsafe {
if mem::size_of::<T>() == 0 {
self.end = (self.end as usize - 1) as *const _;
Some(ptr::read(NonNull::<T>::dangling().as_ptr()))
} else {
self.end = self.end.offset(-1);
Some(ptr::read(self.end))
}
}
}
}
}
And that's it. Iteration works!

116
9.11 The Final Code
use std::alloc::{self, Layout};
use std::marker::PhantomData;
use std::mem;
use std::ops::{Deref, DerefMut};
use std::ptr::{self, NonNull};

struct RawVec<T> {
ptr: NonNull<T>,
cap: usize,
}

unsafe impl<T: Send> Send for RawVec<T> {}

unsafe impl<T: Sync> Sync for RawVec<T> {}

impl<T> RawVec<T> {
fn new() -> Self {
// !0 is usize::MAX. This branch should be stripped at compile
↪ time.
let cap = if mem::size_of::<T>() == 0 { !0 } else { 0 };

// `NonNull::dangling()` doubles as "unallocated" and

↪ "zero-sized allocation"
RawVec {
ptr: NonNull::dangling(),
cap,
}
}

fn grow(&mut self) {
// since we set the capacity to usize::MAX when T has size 0,
// getting to here necessarily means the Vec is overfull.
assert!(mem::size_of::<T>() != 0, "capacity overflow");

let (new_cap, new_layout) = if self.cap == 0 {

(1, Layout::array::<T>(1).unwrap())
} else {
// This can't overflow because we ensure self.cap <=
↪ isize::MAX.
let new_cap = 2 * self.cap;

// `Layout::array` checks that the number of bytes is <=

↪ usize::MAX,
// but this is redundant since old_layout.size() <=
↪ isize::MAX,
// so the `unwrap` should never fail.
let new_layout = Layout::array::<T>(new_cap).unwrap();
(new_cap, new_layout)
};

117
 // Ensure that the new allocation doesn't exceed `isize::MAX`
↪ bytes.
assert!(
new_layout.size() <= isize::MAX as usize,
"Allocation too large"
);

let new_ptr = if self.cap == 0 {

unsafe { alloc::alloc(new_layout) }
} else {
let old_layout = Layout::array::<T>(self.cap).unwrap();
let old_ptr = self.ptr.as_ptr() as *mut u8;
unsafe { alloc::realloc(old_ptr, old_layout,
↪ new_layout.size()) }
};

// If allocation fails, `new_ptr` will be null, in which case we

↪ abort.
self.ptr = match NonNull::new(new_ptr as *mut T) {
Some(p) => p,
None => alloc::handle_alloc_error(new_layout),
};
self.cap = new_cap;
}
}

impl<T> Drop for RawVec<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
let elem_size = mem::size_of::<T>();

if self.cap != 0 && elem_size != 0 {

unsafe {
alloc::dealloc(
self.ptr.as_ptr() as *mut u8,
Layout::array::<T>(self.cap).unwrap(),
);
}
}
}
}

pub struct Vec<T> {

buf: RawVec<T>,
len: usize,
}

impl<T> Vec<T> {
fn ptr(&self) -> *mut T {
self.buf.ptr.as_ptr()
}

118
fn cap(&self) -> usize {
self.buf.cap
}

pub fn new() -> Self {

Vec {
buf: RawVec::new(),
len: 0,
}
}
pub fn push(&mut self, elem: T) {
if self.len == self.cap() {
self.buf.grow();
}

unsafe {
ptr::write(self.ptr().add(self.len), elem);
}

// Can't overflow, we'll OOM first.

self.len += 1;
}

pub fn pop(&mut self) -> Option<T> {

if self.len == 0 {
None
} else {
self.len -= 1;
unsafe { Some(ptr::read(self.ptr().add(self.len))) }
}
}

pub fn insert(&mut self, index: usize, elem: T) {

assert!(index <= self.len, "index out of bounds");
if self.len == self.cap() {
self.buf.grow();
}

unsafe {
ptr::copy(
self.ptr().add(index),
self.ptr().add(index + 1),
self.len - index,
);
ptr::write(self.ptr().add(index), elem);
}

self.len += 1;
}

pub fn remove(&mut self, index: usize) -> T {

119
 assert!(index < self.len, "index out of bounds");

self.len -= 1;

unsafe {
let result = ptr::read(self.ptr().add(index));
ptr::copy(
self.ptr().add(index + 1),
self.ptr().add(index),
self.len - index,
);
result
}
}

pub fn drain(&mut self) -> Drain<T> {

let iter = unsafe { RawValIter::new(&self) };

// this is a mem::forget safety thing. If Drain is forgotten, we

↪ just
// leak the whole Vec's contents. Also we need to do this
↪ *eventually*
// anyway, so why not do it now?
self.len = 0;

Drain {
iter,
vec: PhantomData,
}
}
}

impl<T> Drop for Vec<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
while let Some(_) = self.pop() {}
// deallocation is handled by RawVec
}
}

impl<T> Deref for Vec<T> {

type Target = [T];
fn deref(&self) -> &[T] {
unsafe { std::slice::from_raw_parts(self.ptr(), self.len) }
}
}

impl<T> DerefMut for Vec<T> {

fn deref_mut(&mut self) -> &mut [T] {
unsafe { std::slice::from_raw_parts_mut(self.ptr(), self.len) }
}
}

120
impl<T> IntoIterator for Vec<T> {
type Item = T;
type IntoIter = IntoIter<T>;
fn into_iter(self) -> IntoIter<T> {
let (iter, buf) = unsafe {
(RawValIter::new(&self), ptr::read(&self.buf))
};

mem::forget(self);

IntoIter {
iter,
_buf: buf,
}
}
}

struct RawValIter<T> {
start: *const T,
end: *const T,
}

impl<T> RawValIter<T> {
unsafe fn new(slice: &[T]) -> Self {
RawValIter {
start: slice.as_ptr(),
end: if mem::size_of::<T>() == 0 {
((slice.as_ptr() as usize) + slice.len()) as *const _
} else if slice.len() == 0 {
slice.as_ptr()
} else {
slice.as_ptr().add(slice.len())
},
}
}
}

impl<T> Iterator for RawValIter<T> {

type Item = T;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
if self.start == self.end {
None
} else {
unsafe {
if mem::size_of::<T>() == 0 {
self.start = (self.start as usize + 1) as *const _;
Some(ptr::read(NonNull::<T>::dangling().as_ptr()))
} else {
let old_ptr = self.start;
self.start = self.start.offset(1);

121
 Some(ptr::read(old_ptr))
}
}
}
}

fn size_hint(&self) -> (usize, Option<usize>) {

let elem_size = mem::size_of::<T>();
let len = (self.end as usize - self.start as usize)
/ if elem_size == 0 { 1 } else { elem_size };
(len, Some(len))
}
}

impl<T> DoubleEndedIterator for RawValIter<T> {

fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
if self.start == self.end {
None
} else {
unsafe {
if mem::size_of::<T>() == 0 {
self.end = (self.end as usize - 1) as *const _;
Some(ptr::read(NonNull::<T>::dangling().as_ptr()))
} else {
self.end = self.end.offset(-1);
Some(ptr::read(self.end))
}
}
}
}
}

pub struct IntoIter<T> {

_buf: RawVec<T>, // we don't actually care about this. Just need it
↪ to live.
iter: RawValIter<T>,
}

impl<T> Iterator for IntoIter<T> {

type Item = T;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
self.iter.next()
}
fn size_hint(&self) -> (usize, Option<usize>) {
self.iter.size_hint()
}
}

impl<T> DoubleEndedIterator for IntoIter<T> {

fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
self.iter.next_back()

122
 }
}

impl<T> Drop for IntoIter<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
for _ in &mut *self {}
}
}

pub struct Drain<'a, T: 'a> {

vec: PhantomData<&'a mut Vec<T>>,
iter: RawValIter<T>,
}

impl<'a, T> Iterator for Drain<'a, T> {

type Item = T;
fn next(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
self.iter.next()
}
fn size_hint(&self) -> (usize, Option<usize>) {
self.iter.size_hint()
}
}

impl<'a, T> DoubleEndedIterator for Drain<'a, T> {

fn next_back(&mut self) -> Option<T> {
self.iter.next_back()
}
}

impl<'a, T> Drop for Drain<'a, T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
// pre-drain the iter
for _ in &mut *self {}
}
}

123
Chapter 10

Implementing Arc and Mutex

Knowing the theory is all fine and good, but the best way to understand something is to use it.
To better understand atomics and interior mutability, we'll be implementing versions of the
standard library's Arc and Mutex types.
TODO: Write Mutex chapters.

10.1 Implementing Arc

In this section, we'll be implementing a simpler version of std::sync::Arc. Similarly
to the implementation of Vec we made earlier, we won't be taking advantage of as many
optimizations, intrinsics, or unstable code as the standard library may.
This implementation is loosely based on the standard library's implementation (technically
taken from alloc::sync in 1.49, as that's where it's actually implemented), but it will not
support weak references at the moment as they make the implementation slightly more
complex.
Please note that this section is very work-in-progress at the moment.

10.1.1 Layout
Let's start by making the layout for our implementation of Arc.
An Arc<T> provides thread-safe shared ownership of a value of type T, allocated in the heap.
Sharing implies immutability in Rust, so we don't need to design anything that manages
access to that value, right? Although interior mutability types like Mutex allow Arc's users to
create shared mutability, Arc itself doesn't need to concern itself with these issues.
However there is one place where Arc needs to concern itself with mutation: destruction.
When all the owners of the Arc go away, we need to be able to drop its contents and free its
allocation. So we need a way for an owner to know if it's the last owner, and the simplest
way to do that is with a count of the owners -- Reference Counting.
Unfortunately, this reference count is inherently shared mutable state, so Arc does need to
think about synchronization. We could use a Mutex for this, but that's overkill. Instead, we'll

124
use atomics. And since everyone already needs a pointer to the T's allocation, we might as
well put the reference count in that same allocation.
Naively, it would look something like this:
use std::sync::atomic;

pub struct Arc<T> {

ptr: *mut ArcInner<T>,
}

pub struct ArcInner<T> {

rc: atomic::AtomicUsize,
data: T,
}
This would compile, however it would be incorrect. First of all, the compiler will give us too
strict variance. For example, an Arc<&'static str> couldn't be used where an Arc<&'a
str> was expected. More importantly, it will give incorrect ownership information to the drop
checker, as it will assume we don't own any values of type T. As this is a structure providing
shared ownership of a value, at some point there will be an instance of this structure that
entirely owns its data. See the chapter on ownership and lifetimes for all the details on
variance and drop check.
To fix the first problem, we can use NonNull<T>. Note that NonNull<T> is a wrapper around
a raw pointer that declares that:
• We are covariant over T
• Our pointer is never null
To fix the second problem, we can include a PhantomData marker containing an
ArcInner<T>. This will tell the drop checker that we have some notion of ownership of a
value of ArcInner<T> (which itself contains some T).
With these changes we get our final structure:
use std::marker::PhantomData;
use std::ptr::NonNull;
use std::sync::atomic::AtomicUsize;

pub struct Arc<T> {

ptr: NonNull<ArcInner<T>>,
phantom: PhantomData<ArcInner<T>>,
}

pub struct ArcInner<T> {

rc: AtomicUsize,
data: T,
}

10.1.2 Base Code

Now that we've decided the layout for our implementation of Arc, let's create some basic
code.

125
Constructing the Arc

We'll first need a way to construct an Arc<T>.

This is pretty simple, as we just need to box the ArcInner<T> and get a NonNull<T> pointer
to it.
impl<T> Arc<T> {
pub fn new(data: T) -> Arc<T> {
// We start the reference count at 1, as that first reference is
↪ the
// current pointer.
let boxed = Box::new(ArcInner {
rc: AtomicUsize::new(1),
data,
});
Arc {
// It is okay to call `.unwrap()` here as we get a pointer
↪ from
// `Box::into_raw` which is guaranteed to not be null.
ptr: NonNull::new(Box::into_raw(boxed)).unwrap(),
phantom: PhantomData,
}
}
}

Send and Sync

Since we're building a concurrency primitive, we'll need to be able to send it across threads.
Thus, we can implement the Send and Sync marker traits. For more information on these,
see the section on Send and Sync.
This is okay because:
• You can only get a mutable reference to the value inside an Arc if and only if it is the
only Arc referencing that data (which only happens in Drop)
• We use atomics for the shared mutable reference counting
unsafe impl<T: Sync + Send> Send for Arc<T> {}
unsafe impl<T: Sync + Send> Sync for Arc<T> {}
We need to have the bound T: Sync + Send because if we did not provide those bounds, it
would be possible to share values that are thread-unsafe across a thread boundary via an
Arc, which could possibly cause data races or unsoundness.
For example, if those bounds were not present, Arc<Rc<u32>> would be Sync or Send,
meaning that you could clone the Rc out of the Arc to send it across a thread (without creating
an entirely new Rc), which would create data races as Rc is not thread-safe.

Getting the ArcInner

To dereference the NonNull<T> pointer into a &T, we can call NonNull::as_ref. This is
unsafe, unlike the typical as_ref function, so we must call it like this:
unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() }

126
We'll be using this snippet a few times in this code (usually with an associated let binding).
This unsafety is okay because while this Arc is alive, we're guaranteed that the inner pointer
is valid.

Deref

Alright. Now we can make Arcs (and soon will be able to clone and destroy them correctly),
but how do we get to the data inside?
What we need now is an implementation of Deref.
We'll need to import the trait:
use std::ops::Deref;
And here's the implementation:
impl<T> Deref for Arc<T> {
type Target = T;

fn deref(&self) -> &T {

let inner = unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() };
&inner.data
}
}
Pretty simple, eh? This simply dereferences the NonNull pointer to the ArcInner<T>, then
gets a reference to the data inside.

Code

Here's all the code from this section:

use std::ops::Deref;

impl<T> Arc<T> {
pub fn new(data: T) -> Arc<T> {
// We start the reference count at 1, as that first reference is
↪ the
// current pointer.
let boxed = Box::new(ArcInner {
rc: AtomicUsize::new(1),
data,
});
Arc {
// It is okay to call `.unwrap()` here as we get a pointer
↪ from
// `Box::into_raw` which is guaranteed to not be null.
ptr: NonNull::new(Box::into_raw(boxed)).unwrap(),
phantom: PhantomData,
}
}
}

127
unsafe impl<T: Sync + Send> Send for Arc<T> {}
unsafe impl<T: Sync + Send> Sync for Arc<T> {}

impl<T> Deref for Arc<T> {

type Target = T;

fn deref(&self) -> &T {

let inner = unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() };
&inner.data
}
}

10.1.3 Cloning
Now that we've got some basic code set up, we'll need a way to clone the Arc.
Basically, we need to:
1. Increment the atomic reference count
2. Construct a new instance of the Arc from the inner pointer
First, we need to get access to the ArcInner:
let inner = unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() };
We can update the atomic reference count as follows:
let old_rc = inner.rc.fetch_add(1, Ordering::???);
But what ordering should we use here? We don't really have any code that will need atomic
synchronization when cloning, as we do not modify the internal value while cloning. Thus, we
can use a Relaxed ordering here, which implies no happens-before relationship but is atomic.
When Dropping the Arc, however, we'll need to atomically synchronize when decrementing
the reference count. This is described more in the section on the Drop implementation for
Arc. For more information on atomic relationships and Relaxed ordering, see the section on
atomics.
Thus, the code becomes this:
let old_rc = inner.rc.fetch_add(1, Ordering::Relaxed);
We'll need to add another import to use Ordering:
use std::sync::atomic::Ordering;
However, we have one problem with this implementation right now. What if someone
decides to mem::forget a bunch of Arcs? The code we have written so far (and will write)
assumes that the reference count accurately portrays how many Arcs are in memory, but
with mem::forget this is false. Thus, when more and more Arcs are cloned from this one
without them being Dropped and the reference count being decremented, we can overflow!
This will cause use-after-free which is INCREDIBLY BAD!
To handle this, we need to check that the reference count does not go over some arbitrary
value (below usize::MAX, as we're storing the reference count as an AtomicUsize), and do
something.

128
The standard library's implementation decides to just abort the program (as it is an incredibly
unlikely case in normal code and if it happens, the program is probably incredibly degenerate)
if the reference count reaches isize::MAX (about half of usize::MAX) on any thread, on the
assumption that there are probably not about 2 billion threads (or about 9 quintillion on
some 64-bit machines) incrementing the reference count at once. This is what we'll do.
It's pretty simple to implement this behavior:
if old_rc >= isize::MAX as usize {
std::process::abort();
}
Then, we need to return a new instance of the Arc:
Self {
ptr: self.ptr,
phantom: PhantomData
}
Now, let's wrap this all up inside the Clone implementation:
use std::sync::atomic::Ordering;

impl<T> Clone for Arc<T> {

fn clone(&self) -> Arc<T> {
let inner = unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() };
// Using a relaxed ordering is alright here as we don't need any
↪ atomic
// synchronization here as we're not modifying or accessing the
↪ inner
// data.
let old_rc = inner.rc.fetch_add(1, Ordering::Relaxed);

if old_rc >= isize::MAX as usize {

std::process::abort();
}

Self {
ptr: self.ptr,
phantom: PhantomData,
}
}
}

10.1.4 Dropping
We now need a way to decrease the reference count and drop the data once it is low enough,
otherwise the data will live forever on the heap.
To do this, we can implement Drop.
Basically, we need to:
1. Decrement the reference count
2. If there is only one reference remaining to the data, then:

129
 3. Atomically fence the data to prevent reordering of the use and deletion of the data
4. Drop the inner data
First, we'll need to get access to the ArcInner:
let inner = unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() };
Now, we need to decrement the reference count. To streamline our code, we can also return
if the returned value from fetch_sub (the value of the reference count before decrementing
it) is not equal to 1 (which happens when we are not the last reference to the data).
if inner.rc.fetch_sub(1, Ordering::Release) != 1 {
return;
}
We then need to create an atomic fence to prevent reordering of the use of the data and
deletion of the data. As described in the standard library's implementation of Arc:
This fence is needed to prevent reordering of use of the data and deletion of
the data. Because it is marked Release, the decreasing of the reference count
synchronizes with this Acquire fence. This means that use of the data happens
before decreasing the reference count, which happens before this fence, which
happens before the deletion of the data.
As explained in the Boost documentation,
It is important to enforce any possible access to the object in one thread
(through an existing reference) to happen before deleting the object in a
different thread. This is achieved by a ”release” operation after dropping
a reference (any access to the object through this reference must obvi-
ously happened before), and an ”acquire” operation before deleting the
object.
In particular, while the contents of an Arc are usually immutable, it's possible to
have interior writes to something like a Mutex. Since a Mutex is not acquired when
it is deleted, we can't rely on its synchronization logic to make writes in thread A
visible to a destructor running in thread B.
Also note that the Acquire fence here could probably be replaced with an Acquire
load, which could improve performance in highly-contended situations. See 2.
To do this, we do the following:
use std::sync::atomic;
atomic::fence(Ordering::Acquire);
Finally, we can drop the data itself. We use Box::from_raw to drop the boxed ArcInner<T>
and its data. This takes a *mut T and not a NonNull<T>, so we must convert using
NonNull::as_ptr.
unsafe { Box::from_raw(self.ptr.as_ptr()); }
This is safe as we know we have the last pointer to the ArcInner and that its pointer is valid.
Now, let's wrap this all up inside the Drop implementation:
impl<T> Drop for Arc<T> {
fn drop(&mut self) {
let inner = unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() };

130
 if inner.rc.fetch_sub(1, Ordering::Release) != 1 {
return;
}
// This fence is needed to prevent reordering of the use and
↪ deletion
// of the data.
atomic::fence(Ordering::Acquire);
// This is safe as we know we have the last pointer to the
↪ `ArcInner`
// and that its pointer is valid.
unsafe { Box::from_raw(self.ptr.as_ptr()); }
}
}

10.1.5 Final Code

Here's the final code, with some added comments and re-ordered imports:
use std::marker::PhantomData;
use std::ops::Deref;
use std::ptr::NonNull;
use std::sync::atomic::{self, AtomicUsize, Ordering};

pub struct Arc<T> {

ptr: NonNull<ArcInner<T>>,
phantom: PhantomData<ArcInner<T>>,
}

pub struct ArcInner<T> {

rc: AtomicUsize,
data: T,
}

impl<T> Arc<T> {
pub fn new(data: T) -> Arc<T> {
// We start the reference count at 1, as that first reference is
↪ the
// current pointer.
let boxed = Box::new(ArcInner {
rc: AtomicUsize::new(1),
data,
});
Arc {
// It is okay to call `.unwrap()` here as we get a pointer
↪ from
// `Box::into_raw` which is guaranteed to not be null.
ptr: NonNull::new(Box::into_raw(boxed)).unwrap(),
phantom: PhantomData,
}
}
}

131
unsafe impl<T: Sync + Send> Send for Arc<T> {}
unsafe impl<T: Sync + Send> Sync for Arc<T> {}

impl<T> Deref for Arc<T> {

type Target = T;

fn deref(&self) -> &T {

let inner = unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() };
&inner.data
}
}

impl<T> Clone for Arc<T> {

fn clone(&self) -> Arc<T> {
let inner = unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() };
// Using a relaxed ordering is alright here as we don't need any
↪ atomic
// synchronization here as we're not modifying or accessing the
↪ inner
// data.
let old_rc = inner.rc.fetch_add(1, Ordering::Relaxed);

if old_rc >= isize::MAX as usize {

std::process::abort();
}

Self {
ptr: self.ptr,
phantom: PhantomData,
}
}
}

impl<T> Drop for Arc<T> {

fn drop(&mut self) {
let inner = unsafe { self.ptr.as_ref() };
if inner.rc.fetch_sub(1, Ordering::Release) != 1 {
return;
}
// This fence is needed to prevent reordering of the use and
↪ deletion
// of the data.
atomic::fence(Ordering::Acquire);
// This is safe as we know we have the last pointer to the
↪ `ArcInner`
// and that its pointer is valid.
unsafe { Box::from_raw(self.ptr.as_ptr()); }
}
}

132
Chapter 11

Foreign Function Interface

Introduction
This guide will use the snappy compression/decompression library as an introduction to
writing bindings for foreign code. Rust is currently unable to call directly into a C++ library,
but snappy includes a C interface (documented in snappy-c.h).

A note about libc

Many of these examples use the libc crate, which provides various type definitions for C
types, among other things. If you’re trying these examples yourself, you’ll need to add libc
to your Cargo.toml:
[dependencies]
libc = "0.2.0"

Calling foreign functions

The following is a minimal example of calling a foreign function which will compile if snappy
is installed:
use libc::size_t;

extern {
fn snappy_max_compressed_length(source_length: size_t) -> size_t;
}

fn main() {
let x = unsafe { snappy_max_compressed_length(100) };
println!("max compressed length of a 100 byte buffer: {}", x);
}
The extern block is a list of function signatures in a foreign library, in this case with the
platform's C ABI. The #[link(...)] attribute is used to instruct the linker to link against
the snappy library so the symbols are resolved.

133
Foreign functions are assumed to be unsafe so calls to them need to be wrapped with unsafe
{} as a promise to the compiler that everything contained within truly is safe. C libraries
often expose interfaces that aren't thread-safe, and almost any function that takes a pointer
argument isn't valid for all possible inputs since the pointer could be dangling, and raw
pointers fall outside of Rust's safe memory model.
When declaring the argument types to a foreign function, the Rust compiler cannot check if
the declaration is correct, so specifying it correctly is part of keeping the binding correct at
runtime.
The extern block can be extended to cover the entire snappy API:
use libc::{c_int, size_t};

extern {
fn snappy_compress(input: *const u8,
input_length: size_t,
compressed: *mut u8,
compressed_length: *mut size_t) -> c_int;
fn snappy_uncompress(compressed: *const u8,
compressed_length: size_t,
uncompressed: *mut u8,
uncompressed_length: *mut size_t) -> c_int;
fn snappy_max_compressed_length(source_length: size_t) -> size_t;
fn snappy_uncompressed_length(compressed: *const u8,
compressed_length: size_t,
result: *mut size_t) -> c_int;
fn snappy_validate_compressed_buffer(compressed: *const u8,
compressed_length: size_t) ->
↪ c_int;
}

Creating a safe interface

The raw C API needs to be wrapped to provide memory safety and make use of higher-level
concepts like vectors. A library can choose to expose only the safe, high-level interface and
hide the unsafe internal details.
Wrapping the functions which expect buffers involves using the slice::raw module to ma-
nipulate Rust vectors as pointers to memory. Rust's vectors are guaranteed to be a contiguous
block of memory. The length is the number of elements currently contained, and the capacity
is the total size in elements of the allocated memory. The length is less than or equal to the
capacity.
pub fn validate_compressed_buffer(src: &[u8]) -> bool {
unsafe {
snappy_validate_compressed_buffer(src.as_ptr(), src.len() as
↪ size_t) == 0
}
}
The validate_compressed_buffer wrapper above makes use of an unsafe block, but it
makes the guarantee that calling it is safe for all inputs by leaving off unsafe from the

134
function signature.
The snappy_compress and snappy_uncompress functions are more complex, since a buffer
has to be allocated to hold the output too.
The snappy_max_compressed_length function can be used to allocate a vector with the
maximum required capacity to hold the compressed output. The vector can then be passed to
the snappy_compress function as an output parameter. An output parameter is also passed
to retrieve the true length after compression for setting the length.
pub fn compress(src: &[u8]) -> Vec<u8> {
unsafe {
let srclen = src.len() as size_t;
let psrc = src.as_ptr();

let mut dstlen = snappy_max_compressed_length(srclen);

let mut dst = Vec::with_capacity(dstlen as usize);
let pdst = dst.as_mut_ptr();

snappy_compress(psrc, srclen, pdst, &mut dstlen);

dst.set_len(dstlen as usize);
dst
}
}
Decompression is similar, because snappy stores the uncompressed size as part of the compres-
sion format and snappy_uncompressed_length will retrieve the exact buffer size required.
pub fn uncompress(src: &[u8]) -> Option<Vec<u8>> {
unsafe {
let srclen = src.len() as size_t;
let psrc = src.as_ptr();

let mut dstlen: size_t = 0;

snappy_uncompressed_length(psrc, srclen, &mut dstlen);

let mut dst = Vec::with_capacity(dstlen as usize);

let pdst = dst.as_mut_ptr();

if snappy_uncompress(psrc, srclen, pdst, &mut dstlen) == 0 {

dst.set_len(dstlen as usize);
Some(dst)
} else {
None // SNAPPY_INVALID_INPUT
}
}
}
Then, we can add some tests to show how to use them.
mod tests {
use super::*;

fn valid() {

135
 let d = vec![0xde, 0xad, 0xd0, 0x0d];
let c: &[u8] = &compress(&d);
assert!(validate_compressed_buffer(c));
assert!(uncompress(c) == Some(d));
}

fn invalid() {
let d = vec![0, 0, 0, 0];
assert!(!validate_compressed_buffer(&d));
assert!(uncompress(&d).is_none());
}

fn empty() {
let d = vec![];
assert!(!validate_compressed_buffer(&d));
assert!(uncompress(&d).is_none());
let c = compress(&d);
assert!(validate_compressed_buffer(&c));
assert!(uncompress(&c) == Some(d));
}
}

Destructors
Foreign libraries often hand off ownership of resources to the calling code. When this occurs,
we must use Rust's destructors to provide safety and guarantee the release of these resources
(especially in the case of panic).
For more about destructors, see the Drop trait.

Calling Rust code from C

You may wish to compile Rust code in a way so that it can be called from C. This is fairly easy,
but requires a few things.

Rust side
First, we assume you have a lib crate named as rust_from_c. lib.rs should have Rust code
as following:
pub extern "C" fn hello_from_rust() {
println!("Hello from Rust!");
}
The extern "C" makes this function adhere to the C calling convention, as discussed below
in ”Foreign Calling Conventions”. The no_mangle attribute turns off Rust's name mangling,
so that it has a well defined symbol to link to.
Then, to compile Rust code as a shared library that can be called from C, add the following to
your Cargo.toml:

136
[lib]
crate-type = ["cdylib"]
(NOTE: We could also use the staticlib crate type but it needs to tweak some linking flags.)
Run cargo build and you're ready to go on the Rust side.

C side
We'll create a C file to call the hello_from_rust function and compile it by gcc.
C file should look like:
extern void hello_from_rust();

int main(void) {
hello_from_rust();
return 0;
}
We name the file as call_rust.c and place it on the crate root. Run the following to compile:
gcc call_rust.c -o call_rust -lrust_from_c -L./target/debug
-l and -L tell gcc to find our Rust library.
Finally, we can call Rust code from C with LD_LIBRARY_PATH specified:
$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./target/debug ./call_rust
Hello from Rust!
That's it! For more realistic example, check the cbindgen.

Callbacks from C code to Rust functions

Some external libraries require the usage of callbacks to report back their current state or
intermediate data to the caller. It is possible to pass functions defined in Rust to an external
library. The requirement for this is that the callback function is marked as extern with the
correct calling convention to make it callable from C code.
The callback function can then be sent through a registration call to the C library and after-
wards be invoked from there.
A basic example is:
Rust code:
extern fn callback(a: i32) {
println!("I'm called from C with value {0}", a);
}

extern {
fn register_callback(cb: extern fn(i32)) -> i32;
fn trigger_callback();
}

fn main() {

137
 unsafe {
register_callback(callback);
trigger_callback(); // Triggers the callback.
}
}
C code:
typedef void (*rust_callback)(int32_t);
rust_callback cb;

int32_t register_callback(rust_callback callback) {

cb = callback;
return 1;
}

void trigger_callback() {
cb(7); // Will call callback(7) in Rust.
}
In this example Rust's main() will call trigger_callback() in C, which would, in turn, call
back to callback() in Rust.

Targeting callbacks to Rust objects

The former example showed how a global function can be called from C code. However it is
often desired that the callback is targeted to a special Rust object. This could be the object
that represents the wrapper for the respective C object.
This can be achieved by passing a raw pointer to the object down to the C library. The C
library can then include the pointer to the Rust object in the notification. This will allow the
callback to unsafely access the referenced Rust object.
Rust code:
struct RustObject {
a: i32,
// Other members...
}

extern "C" fn callback(target: *mut RustObject, a: i32) {

println!("I'm called from C with value {0}", a);
unsafe {
// Update the value in RustObject with the value received from
↪ the callback:
(*target).a = a;
}
}

extern {
fn register_callback(target: *mut RustObject,
cb: extern fn(*mut RustObject, i32)) -> i32;
fn trigger_callback();

138
}

fn main() {
// Create the object that will be referenced in the callback:
let mut rust_object = Box::new(RustObject { a: 5 });

unsafe {
register_callback(&mut *rust_object, callback);
trigger_callback();
}
}
C code:
typedef void (*rust_callback)(void*, int32_t);
void* cb_target;
rust_callback cb;

int32_t register_callback(void* callback_target, rust_callback callback)

↪ {
cb_target = callback_target;
cb = callback;
return 1;
}

void trigger_callback() {
cb(cb_target, 7); // Will call callback(&rustObject, 7) in Rust.
}

Asynchronous callbacks
In the previously given examples the callbacks are invoked as a direct reaction to a function
call to the external C library. The control over the current thread is switched from Rust to C
to Rust for the execution of the callback, but in the end the callback is executed on the same
thread that called the function which triggered the callback.
Things get more complicated when the external library spawns its own threads and invokes
callbacks from there. In these cases access to Rust data structures inside the callbacks is
especially unsafe and proper synchronization mechanisms must be used. Besides classical
synchronization mechanisms like mutexes, one possibility in Rust is to use channels (in
std::sync::mpsc) to forward data from the C thread that invoked the callback into a Rust
thread.
If an asynchronous callback targets a special object in the Rust address space it is also abso-
lutely necessary that no more callbacks are performed by the C library after the respective
Rust object gets destroyed. This can be achieved by unregistering the callback in the object's
destructor and designing the library in a way that guarantees that no callback will be per-
formed after deregistration.

139
Linking
The link attribute on extern blocks provides the basic building block for instructing rustc
how it will link to native libraries. There are two accepted forms of the link attribute today:
• #[link(name = "foo")]
• #[link(name = "foo", kind = "bar")]
In both of these cases, foo is the name of the native library that we're linking to, and in
the second case bar is the type of native library that the compiler is linking to. There are
currently three known types of native libraries:
• Dynamic - #[link(name = "readline")]
• Static - #[link(name = "my_build_dependency", kind = "static")]
• Frameworks - #[link(name = "CoreFoundation", kind = "framework")]
Note that frameworks are only available on macOS targets.
The different kind values are meant to differentiate how the native library participates in
linkage. From a linkage perspective, the Rust compiler creates two flavors of artifacts: partial
(rlib/staticlib) and final (dylib/binary). Native dynamic library and framework dependencies
are propagated to the final artifact boundary, while static library dependencies are not
propagated at all, because the static libraries are integrated directly into the subsequent
artifact.
A few examples of how this model can be used are:
• A native build dependency. Sometimes some C/C++ glue is needed when writing some
Rust code, but distribution of the C/C++ code in a library format is a burden. In this
case, the code will be archived into libfoo.a and then the Rust crate would declare a
dependency via #[link(name = "foo", kind = "static")].
Regardless of the flavor of output for the crate, the native static library will be included
in the output, meaning that distribution of the native static library is not necessary.
• A normal dynamic dependency. Common system libraries (like readline) are available
on a large number of systems, and often a static copy of these libraries cannot be found.
When this dependency is included in a Rust crate, partial targets (like rlibs) will not link
to the library, but when the rlib is included in a final target (like a binary), the native
library will be linked in.
On macOS, frameworks behave with the same semantics as a dynamic library.

Unsafe blocks
Some operations, like dereferencing raw pointers or calling functions that have been marked
unsafe are only allowed inside unsafe blocks. Unsafe blocks isolate unsafety and are a promise
to the compiler that the unsafety does not leak out of the block.
Unsafe functions, on the other hand, advertise it to the world. An unsafe function is written
like this:
unsafe fn kaboom(ptr: *const i32) -> i32 { *ptr }
This function can only be called from an unsafe block or another unsafe function.

140
Accessing foreign globals
Foreign APIs often export a global variable which could do something like track global state. In
order to access these variables, you declare them in extern blocks with the static keyword:
extern {
static rl_readline_version: libc::c_int;
}

fn main() {
println!("You have readline version {} installed.",
unsafe { rl_readline_version as i32 });
}
Alternatively, you may need to alter global state provided by a foreign interface. To do this,
statics can be declared with mut so we can mutate them.
use std::ffi::CString;
use std::ptr;

extern {
static mut rl_prompt: *const libc::c_char;
}

fn main() {
let prompt = CString::new("[my-awesome-shell] $").unwrap();
unsafe {
rl_prompt = prompt.as_ptr();

println!("{:?}", rl_prompt);

rl_prompt = ptr::null();
}
}
Note that all interaction with a static mut is unsafe, both reading and writing. Dealing
with global mutable state requires a great deal of care.

Foreign calling conventions

Most foreign code exposes a C ABI, and Rust uses the platform's C calling convention by
default when calling foreign functions. Some foreign functions, most notably the Windows
API, use other calling conventions. Rust provides a way to tell the compiler which convention
to use:
extern "stdcall" {
fn SetEnvironmentVariableA(n: *const u8, v: *const u8) ->
↪ libc::c_int;
}
This applies to the entire extern block. The list of supported ABI constraints are:
• stdcall

141
 • aapcs
• cdecl
• fastcall
• thiscall
• vectorcall This is currently hidden behind the abi_vectorcall gate and is subject
to change.
• Rust
• rust-intrinsic
• system
• C
• win64
• sysv64
Most of the abis in this list are self-explanatory, but the system abi may seem a little odd.
This constraint selects whatever the appropriate ABI is for interoperating with the target's
libraries. For example, on win32 with a x86 architecture, this means that the abi used would
be stdcall. On x86_64, however, windows uses the C calling convention, so C would be used.
This means that in our previous example, we could have used extern "system" { ... }
to define a block for all windows systems, not only x86 ones.

Interoperability with foreign code

Rust guarantees that the layout of a struct is compatible with the platform's representation
in C only if the #[repr(C)] attribute is applied to it. #[repr(C, packed)] can be used to
lay out struct members without padding. #[repr(C)] can also be applied to an enum.
Rust's owned boxes (Box<T>) use non-nullable pointers as handles which point to the con-
tained object. However, they should not be manually created because they are managed by
internal allocators. References can safely be assumed to be non-nullable pointers directly to
the type. However, breaking the borrow checking or mutability rules is not guaranteed to
be safe, so prefer using raw pointers (*) if that's needed because the compiler can't make as
many assumptions about them.
Vectors and strings share the same basic memory layout, and utilities are available in the
vec and str modules for working with C APIs. However, strings are not terminated with \0.
If you need a NUL-terminated string for interoperability with C, you should use the CString
type in the std::ffi module.
The libc crate on crates.io includes type aliases and function definitions for the C standard
library in the libc module, and Rust links against libc and libm by default.

Variadic functions
In C, functions can be 'variadic', meaning they accept a variable number of arguments. This
can be achieved in Rust by specifying ... within the argument list of a foreign function
declaration:
extern {
fn foo(x: i32, ...);
}

142
fn main() {
unsafe {
foo(10, 20, 30, 40, 50);
}
}
Normal Rust functions can not be variadic:
// This will not compile

fn foo(x: i32, ...) {}

The ”nullable pointer optimization”

Certain Rust types are defined to never be null. This includes references (&T, &mut T),
boxes (Box<T>), and function pointers (extern "abi" fn()). When interfacing with C,
pointers that might be null are often used, which would seem to require some messy
transmutes and/or unsafe code to handle conversions to/from Rust types. However, try-
ing to construct/work with these invalid values is undefined behavior, so you should use
the following workaround instead.
As a special case, an enum is eligible for the ”nullable pointer optimization” if it contains
exactly two variants, one of which contains no data and the other contains a field of one of
the non-nullable types listed above. This means no extra space is required for a discriminant;
rather, the empty variant is represented by putting a null value into the non-nullable field.
This is called an ”optimization”, but unlike other optimizations it is guaranteed to apply to
eligible types.
The most common type that takes advantage of the nullable pointer optimization is
Option<T>, where None corresponds to null. So Option<extern "C" fn(c_int)
-> c_int> is a correct way to represent a nullable function pointer using the C ABI
(corresponding to the C type int (*)(int)).
Here is a contrived example. Let's say some C library has a facility for registering a callback,
which gets called in certain situations. The callback is passed a function pointer and an
integer and it is supposed to run the function with the integer as a parameter. So we have
function pointers flying across the FFI boundary in both directions.
use libc::c_int;

extern "C" {
/// Registers the callback.
fn register(cb: Option<extern "C" fn(Option<extern "C" fn(c_int) ->
↪ c_int>, c_int) -> c_int>);
}

/// This fairly useless function receives a function pointer and an

↪ integer
/// from C, and returns the result of calling the function with the
↪ integer.
/// In case no function is provided, it squares the integer by default.
extern "C" fn apply(process: Option<extern "C" fn(c_int) -> c_int>, int:
↪ c_int) -> c_int {

143
 match process {
Some(f) => f(int),
None => int * int
}
}

fn main() {
unsafe {
register(Some(apply));
}
}
And the code on the C side looks like this:
void register(int (*f)(int (*)(int), int)) {
...
}
No transmute required!

FFI and unwinding

It’s important to be mindful of unwinding when working with FFI. Most ABI strings come
in two variants, one with an -unwind suffix and one without. The Rust ABI always permits
unwinding, so there is no Rust-unwind ABI.
If you expect Rust panics or foreign (e.g. C++) exceptions to cross an FFI boundary, that
boundary must use the appropriate -unwind ABI string. Conversely, if you do not expect
unwinding to cross an ABI boundary, use one of the non-unwind ABI strings.
Note: Compiling with panic=abort will still cause panic! to immediately abort
the process, regardless of which ABI is specified by the function that panics.
If an unwinding operation does encounter an ABI boundary that is not permitted to unwind,
the behavior depends on the source of the unwinding (Rust panic or a foreign exception):
• panic will cause the process to safely abort.
• A foreign exception entering Rust will cause undefined behavior.
Note that the interaction of catch_unwind with foreign exceptions is undefined, as is the
interaction of panic with foreign exception-catching mechanisms (notably C++'s try/catch).

Rust panic with "C-unwind"

extern "C-unwind" fn example() {
panic!("Uh oh");
}
This function (when compiled with panic=unwind) is permitted to unwind C++ stack frames.
[Rust function with `catch_unwind`, which stops the unwinding]
|
...
|
[C++ frames]

144
 | ^
| (calls) | (unwinding
v | goes this
[Rust function `example`] | way)
| |
+--- rust function panics --+
If the C++ frames have objects, their destructors will be called.

C++ throw with "C-unwind"

extern "C-unwind" {
// A C++ function that may throw an exception
fn may_throw();
}

extern "C-unwind" fn rust_passthrough() {

let b = Box::new(5);
unsafe { may_throw(); }
println!("{:?}", &b);
}
A C++ function with a try block may invoke rust_passthrough and catch an exception
thrown by may_throw.
[C++ function with `try` block that invokes `rust_passthrough`]
|
...
|
[Rust function `rust_passthrough`]
| ^
| (calls) | (unwinding
v | goes this
[C++ function `may_throw`] | way)
| |
+--- C++ function throws ----+
If may_throw does throw an exception, b will be dropped. Otherwise, 5 will be printed.

panic can be stopped at an ABI boundary

extern "C" fn assert_nonzero(input: u32) {
assert!(input != 0)
}
If assert_nonzero is called with the argument 0, the runtime is guaranteed to (safely) abort
the process, whether or not compiled with panic=abort.

Catching panic preemptively

If you are writing Rust code that may panic, and you don't wish to abort the process if it
panics, you must use catch_unwind:

145
use std::panic::catch_unwind;

pub extern "C" fn oh_no() -> i32 {

let result = catch_unwind(|| {
panic!("Oops!");
});
match result {
Ok(_) => 0,
Err(_) => 1,
}
}

fn main() {}
Please note that catch_unwind will only catch unwinding panics, not those that abort the
process. See the documentation of catch_unwind for more information.

Representing opaque structs

Sometimes, a C library wants to provide a pointer to something, but not let you know the
internal details of the thing it wants. A stable and simple way is to use a void * argument:
void foo(void *arg);
void bar(void *arg);
We can represent this in Rust with the c_void type:
extern "C" {
pub fn foo(arg: *mut libc::c_void);
pub fn bar(arg: *mut libc::c_void);
}
This is a perfectly valid way of handling the situation. However, we can do a bit better. To
solve this, some C libraries will instead create a struct, where the details and memory layout
of the struct are private. This gives some amount of type safety. These structures are called
‘opaque’. Here’s an example, in C:
struct Foo; /* Foo is a structure, but its contents are not part of the
↪ public interface */
struct Bar;
void foo(struct Foo *arg);
void bar(struct Bar *arg);
To do this in Rust, let’s create our own opaque types:
pub struct Foo {
_data: [u8; 0],
_marker:
core::marker::PhantomData<(*mut u8,
↪ core::marker::PhantomPinned)>,
}
pub struct Bar {
_data: [u8; 0],
_marker:

146
 core::marker::PhantomData<(*mut u8,
↪ core::marker::PhantomPinned)>,
}

extern "C" {
pub fn foo(arg: *mut Foo);
pub fn bar(arg: *mut Bar);
}
By including at least one private field and no constructor, we create an opaque type that
we can't instantiate outside of this module. (A struct with no field could be instantiated by
anyone.) We also want to use this type in FFI, so we have to add #[repr(C)]. The marker
ensures the compiler does not mark the struct as Send, Sync and Unpin are not applied to
the struct. (*mut u8 is not Send or Sync, PhantomPinned is not Unpin)
But because our Foo and Bar types are different, we’ll get type safety between the two of
them, so we cannot accidentally pass a pointer to Foo to bar().
Notice that it is a really bad idea to use an empty enum as FFI type. The compiler relies on
empty enums being uninhabited, so handling values of type &Empty is a huge footgun and
can lead to buggy program behavior (by triggering undefined behavior).
NOTE: The simplest way would use ”extern types”. But it's currently (as of June
2021) unstable and has some unresolved questions, see the RFC page and the
tracking issue for more details.

147
Chapter 12

Beneath std

This section documents features that are normally provided by the std crate and that
#![no_std] developers have to deal with (i.e. provide) to build #![no_std] binary crates.

Using libc
In order to build a #[no_std] executable we will need libc as a dependency. We can specify
this using our Cargo.toml file:
[dependencies]
libc = { version = "0.2.146", default-features = false }
Note that the default features have been disabled. This is a critical step - the default features
of libc include the std crate and so must be disabled.
Alternatively, we can use the unstable rustc_private private feature together with an
extern crate libc; declaration as shown in the examples below. Note that windows-
msvc targets do not require a libc, and correspondingly there is no libc crate in their sysroot.
We do not need the extern crate libc; below, and having it on a windows-msvc target
would be a compile error.

Writing an executable without std

We will probably need a nightly version of the compiler to produce a #![no_std] executable
because on many platforms, we have to provide the eh_personality lang item, which is
unstable.
Controlling the entry point is possible in two ways: the #[start] attribute, or overriding the
default shim for the C main function with your own. Additionally, it's required to define a
panic handler function.
The function marked #[start] is passed the command line parameters in the same format
as C (aside from the exact integer types being used):

// Necessary for `panic = "unwind"` builds on cfg(unix) platforms.

148
extern crate unwind;

// Pull in the system libc library for what crt0.o likely requires.
extern crate libc;

use core::panic::PanicInfo;

// Entry point for this program.

fn main(_argc: isize, _argv: *const *const u8) -> isize {
0
}

// These functions are used by the compiler, but not for an empty
↪ program like this.
// They are normally provided by `std`.
fn rust_eh_personality() {}
fn panic_handler(_info: &PanicInfo) -> ! { core::intrinsics::abort() }
To override the compiler-inserted main shim, we have to disable it with #![no_main] and
then create the appropriate symbol with the correct ABI and the correct name, which requires
overriding the compiler's name mangling too:

// Necessary for `panic = "unwind"` builds on cfg(unix) platforms.

extern crate unwind;

// Pull in the system libc library for what crt0.o likely requires.
extern crate libc;

use core::ffi::{c_char, c_int};

use core::panic::PanicInfo;

// Entry point for this program.

extern "C" fn main(_argc: c_int, _argv: *const *const c_char) -> c_int {
0
}

// These functions are used by the compiler, but not for an empty
↪ program like this.
// They are normally provided by `std`.
fn rust_eh_personality() {}
fn panic_handler(_info: &PanicInfo) -> ! { core::intrinsics::abort() }
If you are working with a target that doesn't have binary releases of the standard library
available via rustup (this probably means you are building the core crate yourself) and
need compiler-rt intrinsics (i.e. you are probably getting linker errors when building an
executable: undefined reference to `__aeabi_memcpy'), you need to manually link to
the compiler_builtins crate to get those intrinsics and solve the linker errors.

149
12.1 #[panic_handler]
#[panic_handler] is used to define the behavior of panic! in #![no_std] applica-
tions. The #[panic_handler] attribute must be applied to a function with signature
fn(&PanicInfo) -> ! and such function must appear once in the dependency graph of a
binary / dylib / cdylib crate. The API of PanicInfo can be found in the API docs.
Given that #![no_std] applications have no standard output and that some #![no_std]
applications, e.g. embedded applications, need different panicking behaviors for devel-
opment and for release it can be helpful to have panic crates, crate that only contain a
#[panic_handler]. This way applications can easily swap the panicking behavior by simply
linking to a different panic crate.
Below is shown an example where an application has a different panicking behavior depend-
ing on whether is compiled using the dev profile (cargo build) or using the release profile
(cargo build --release).
panic-semihosting crate -- log panic messages to the host stderr using semihosting:

use core::fmt::{Write, self};

use core::panic::PanicInfo;

struct HStderr {
// ..
}

fn panic(info: &PanicInfo) -> ! {

let mut host_stderr = HStderr::new();

// logs "panicked at '$reason', src/main.rs:27:4" to the host stderr

writeln!(host_stderr, "{}", info).ok();

loop {}
}
panic-halt crate -- halt the thread on panic; messages are discarded:

use core::panic::PanicInfo;

fn panic(_info: &PanicInfo) -> ! {

loop {}
}
app crate:

// dev profile
extern crate panic_semihosting;

// release profile
extern crate panic_halt;

fn main() {

150
 // ..
}

151