Rust Essentials Second Edition

Key Features

• Get started with Rust to build scalable and high performance applications
• Learn how to create secure and blazingly fast programs in Rust
• Discover the power of Rust when developing concurrent applications for large and scalable software

Book Description

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. "Rust Essentials" will give you a head start to solve systems programming and application tasks with Rust. It is no longer necessary to learn C / C++ to develop resource intensive and low-level systems applications.

This book starts off with an argumentation of Rust's unique place in today's landscape of programming languages. We'll install Rust and learn how to work with its package manager Cargo. Step by step the various concepts are introduced: variables, types, functions, and control structures lay the groundwork. Then we explore more structured data like strings, arrays, and enums and see how pattern matching works. Throughout all this, the unique ways of reasoning the Rust compiler uses to produce safe code are stressed. Rust's specific way of error handling is discussed next, and the overall importance of traits in Rust code. The pillar of memory safety is treated in depth by looking at the various pointer kinds. Next, we see how macros can simplify code generation, and how to compose bigger projects with modules and crates. Finally, we see how we can write safe concurrent code in Rust, look at how to interface with C programs, get a view on the Rust ecosystem and explore the use of the standard library.

What you will learn

• Set up your Rust environment to achieve the highest productivity
• Bridge the performance gap between safe and unsafe languages
• Use pattern matching to create flexible code
• Apply generics and traits to develop widely applicable code
• Organize your code in modules and crates
• Build macros to extend Rust's capabilities and reach
• Apply tasks to tackle problems concurrently in a distributed environment