Book Image

Practical System Programming for Rust Developers

By : Prabhu Eshwarla
Book Image

Practical System Programming for Rust Developers

By: Prabhu Eshwarla

Overview of this book

Modern programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, and Java have become increasingly accepted for application-level programming, but for systems programming, C and C++ are predominantly used due to the need for low-level control of system resources. Rust promises the best of both worlds: the type safety of Java, and the speed and expressiveness of C++, while also including memory safety without a garbage collector. This book is a comprehensive introduction if you’re new to Rust and systems programming and are looking to build reliable and efficient systems software without C or C++. The book takes a unique approach by starting each topic with Linux kernel concepts and APIs relevant to that topic. You’ll also explore how system resources can be controlled from Rust. As you progress, you’ll delve into advanced topics. You’ll cover network programming, focusing on aspects such as working with low-level network primitives and protocols in Rust, before going on to learn how to use and compile Rust with WebAssembly. Later chapters will take you through practical code examples and projects to help you build on your knowledge. By the end of this Rust programming book, you will be equipped with practical skills to write systems software tools, libraries, and utilities in Rust.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started with System Programming in Rust
6
Section 2: Managing and Controlling System Resources in Rust
12
Section 3: Advanced Topics

Chapter 6: Working with Files and Directories in Rust

In the previous chapter, we looked at the details of how Rust uses memory, a key system resource.

In this chapter, we will look at how Rust interacts with another important class of system resources – files and directories. The Rust Standard Library offers a rich set of abstractions that enable platform-independent file and directory operations.

For this chapter, we will review the basics of how files are managed by Unix/Linux, and master the key APIs that the Rust Standard Library provides to deal with files, paths, links, and directories.

Using the Rust Standard Library, we will implement a shell command, rstat, that counts the total number of lines of Rust code in a directory (and its subfolders), and provides a few additional source code metrics.

We will cover the topics in the following order:

  • Understanding Linux system calls for file operations
  • Doing file I/O in Rust
  • Learning directory and...