Rust Memory Safety

Rust's borrow checker is a strict but fair mentor. This skill codifies the patterns for working with it effectively.

The Trinity of Ownership

1. Ownership: Each value has a single owner.
2. Borrowing:
   • Unlimited immutable borrows (&T).
   • EXACTLY ONE mutable borrow (&mut T) at a time.
3. Lifetimes: Ensuring references are never valid longer than the data they point to.

Smart Pointers

• Box<T>: Heap allocation for data with a known size at compile time.
• Rc<T> / Arc<T>: Reference counting for shared ownership (Arc is thread-safe).
• RefCell<T>: Interior mutability (checked at runtime).