9.13 Summary

This chapter covered Rust structs, highlighting their similarities and differences compared to C structs. We explored data organization, behavior association, memory safety, and performance aspects.

Key takeaways include:

  • Structs group named fields; variants include tuple and unit structs.
  • Instances are created using struct literals; access fields via dot notation.
  • Operations like assignment and comparison are typically enabled by derived traits (Copy, PartialEq). Printing uses Debug or Display.
  • Destructuring extracts fields, potentially moving non-Copy data out.
  • Ownership dictates how structs and their fields are managed (drop, move, copy). Lifetimes ensure safety for borrowed fields.
  • Methods (impl blocks) associate behavior (&self, &mut self, self).
  • Generics create reusable struct definitions; trait bounds constrain them.
  • Memory layout is optimized by default; #[repr(C)] ensures C compatibility.
  • Visibility (pub) controls encapsulation at the module level.

Structs are foundational in Rust for creating custom, safe, and efficient data types.