Smart Pointers

Smart pointers, on the other hand, are data structures that act like a pointer but also have additional metadata and capabilities. The concept of smart pointers isn’t unique to Rust: smart pointers originated in C++ and exist in other languages as well. Rust has a variety of smart pointers defined in the standard library that provide functionality beyond that provided by references. To explore the general concept, we'll look at a couple of different examples of smart pointers, including a reference counting smart pointer type. This pointer enables you to allow data to have multiple owners by keeping track of the number of owners and, when no owners remain, cleaning up the data.

Though we didn't call them as such at the time, we’ve already encountered a few smart pointers in this book, including String and Vec in Chapter 8. Both these types count as smart pointers because they own some memory and allow you to manipulate it. They also have metadata and extra capabilities or guarantees. String, for example, stores its capacity as metadata and has the extra ability to ensure its data will always be valid UTF-8.

Given that the smart pointer pattern is a general design pattern used frequently in Rust, this chapter won’t cover every existing smart pointer. Many libraries have their own smart pointers, and you can even write your own. We’ll cover the most common smart pointers in the standard library:

Let’s dive in!