Rust_Introduction.txt

Rust Introduction
Great language for systems building.
Fans are called rustaceans.
Rust provides memory safety via ownership & borrowing, along with the speed of low-level languages.
Ownership makes sure that objects are dropped when not in use.
Borrowing allows objects to be shared via a pointer system. Rust also uses the borrow checker to check if all rules are followed at compile time.
Rust also has a package (aka crate) manager, called Cargo.


To create a directory with a new project/package, use:
        cargo new packageName
This creates a new dir with the src file, and cargo.toml file which contains things like dependencies.
To create an optimized release for production, use:
        cargo build –release
To create just a build, use:
        cargo build
        This builds the exe in the target folder.


Vars are immutable by default. They can be made mutable by adding ‘mut’ to the declaration statement.


You have ints, uints, floats, bools, chars, tuples, arrays (fixed lengths), vectors (variable length).


Rust is statically typed, however the compiler can infer the type at compilation.


Primitive strings are immutable, and fixed length.
There is a String object that is growable (heap allocated). Used only when you need to modify or own string data.


A tuple can only have 12 elements.


Vectors are resizable arrays.


Use “{:?}” to print out arrays in a string.


In a function, if we dont use a semicolon, we are telling rust that the result of that line is what we want to return.


Closures are small functions that can use the vars defined in their current environment/scope.


Structs can be used to create custom data types. They can be used in a similar vein to classes via “impl”. Which allows you to define functions and use the self parameter of structs.


Enums are types which have a few definite values.


Match is similar to a switch.