Book Image

Rust Essentials - Second Edition

By : Ivo Balbaert
Book Image

Rust Essentials - Second Edition

By: Ivo Balbaert

Overview of this book

Rust is the new, open source, fast, and safe systems programming language for the 21st century, developed at Mozilla Research, and with a steadily growing community. It was created to solve the dilemma between high-level, slow code with minimal control over the system, and low-level, fast code with maximum system control. It is no longer necessary to learn C/C++ to develop resource intensive and low-level systems applications. This book will give you a head start to solve systems programming and application tasks with Rust. We start off with an argumentation of Rust's unique place in today's landscape of programming languages. You'll install Rust and learn how to work with its package manager Cargo. The various concepts are introduced step by step: variables, types, functions, and control structures to lay the groundwork. Then we explore more structured data such as strings, arrays, and enums, and you’ll see how pattern matching works. Throughout all this, we stress the unique ways of reasoning that the Rust compiler uses to produce safe code. Next we look at Rust's specific way of error handling, and the overall importance of traits in Rust code. The pillar of memory safety is treated in depth as we explore the various pointer kinds. Next, you’ll see how macros can simplify code generation, and how to compose bigger projects with modules and crates. Finally, you’ll discover how we can write safe concurrent code in Rust and interface with C programs, get a view of the Rust ecosystem, and explore the use of the standard library.

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Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
Starting with Rust
Starting with Rust
The advantages of Rust
The stability of Rust and its evolution
The success of Rust
Servo
Installing Rust
rustc--the Rust compiler
Our first program
Developer tools
The Standard Library
Summary
2
Using Variables and Types
Using Variables and Types
Comments
Global constants
Values and primitive types
Binding variables to values
Scope of a variable and shadowing
Type checking and conversions
Expressions
The stack and the heap
Summary
3
Using Functions and Control Structures
Using Functions and Control Structures
Branching on a condition
Looping
Functions
Attributes
Testing
Summary
4
Structuring Data and Matching Patterns
Structuring Data and Matching Patterns
Strings
Arrays, vectors, and slices
Tuples
Structs
Enums
Getting input from the console
Matching patterns
Program arguments
Summary
5
Higher Order Functions and Error-Handling
Higher Order Functions and Error-Handling
Higher order functions and closures
Iterators
Consumers and adapters
Generic data structures and functions
Error-handling
Summary
6
Using Traits and OOP in Rust
Using Traits and OOP in Rust
Associated functions on structs
Methods on structs
Using a constructor pattern
Using a builder pattern
Methods on tuples and enums
Traits
Using trait constraints
Static and dynamic dispatch
Built-in traits and operator overloading
OOP in Rust
Inheritance with traits
Using the visitor pattern
Summary
7
Ensuring Memory Safety and Pointers
Ensuring Memory Safety and Pointers
Pointers and references
Ownership and borrowing
Boxes
Reference counting
Overview of pointers
Summary
8
Organizing Code and Macros
Organizing Code and Macros
Modules and crates
Macros
Summary
9
Concurrency - Coding for Multicore Execution
Concurrency - Coding for Multicore Execution
Concurrency and threads
Shared mutable states
Communication through channels
Summary
10
Programming at the Boundaries
Programming at the Boundaries
When is code unsafe
Raw pointers
Interfacing with C
Inlining assembly code
Calling Rust from other languages
Summary
11
Exploring the Standard Library
Exploring the Standard Library
Exploring std and the prelude module
Collections - using hashmaps and hashsets
Working with files
Using Rust without the Standard Library
Summary
12
The Ecosystem of Crates
The Ecosystem of Crates
The ecosystem of crates
Working with dates and times
File formats and databases
Web development
Graphics and games
OS and embedded system development
Other resources for learning Rust
Summary

Working with files

Now we show you how to do common operations with files, such as reading and writing, and making folders, and at the same time do proper error handling. The modules that contain these functionalities are std::path, which provides for cross platform file path manipulation, and std::fs.

Paths

File paths from the underlying file system are represented by the Path struct, which is created from a string slice containing the full path with Path::new. Suppose hello.txt is an existing file in the current directory; let's write some code to explore it:

// code from Chapter 11/code/paths.rs:use std::path::Path; 
 
fn main() { 
    let path = Path::new("hello.txt"); 
 let display = path.display(); 
 ...
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