Smart Pointers

Smart Pointers are references to data, so you can use it, without taking ownership of this data. But before talking about Smart Pointers, lets take a look at normal references.

Normal references

You can create references to variables. This gives code the ability to work with those variables, without taking the ownership.

Reference

TODO

Mutable Reference

TODO

Smart Pointers

Smart Pointers are often required, because they give you additional functionalities, where normal references do not fit the problem.

Box

Variables are usually stored in the stack. But sometimes you need to store data on the heap memory. A good example is, when the size of the data struct can not be calculated on compile time. The Box smart pointer is basically a pointer to the struct on the heap.

let pointer = Box::new(5);

Rc

TODO

Arc

TODO

RefCell

TODO

Cell

TODO

Mutex

TODO

RwLock

TODO

Cow

TODO

Weak

TODO

Pin

TODO