Rust for C-Programmers

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.