Who Should Read This Book

If you’re already a systems programmer, and you’re ready for an alternative to C++, this book is for you. If you’re an experienced developer in any programming language, whether that’s C#, Java, Python, JavaScript, or something else, this book is for you too.

However, you don’t just need to learn Rust. To get the most out of the language, you also need to gain some experience with systems programming. We recommend reading this book while also implementing some systems programming side projects in Rust. Build something you’ve never built before, something that takes advantage of Rust’s speed, concurrency, and safety. The list of topics at the beginning of this preface should give you some ideas.

Why We Wrote This Book

We set out to write the book we wished we had when we started learning Rust. Our goal was to tackle the big, new concepts in Rust up front and head-on, presenting them clearly and in depth so as to minimize learning by trial and error.

Navigating This Book

The first two chapters of this book introduce Rust and provide a brief tour before we move on to the fundamental data types in Chapter 3. Chapters 4 and 5 address the core concepts of ownership and references. We recommend reading these first five chapters through in order.

Chapters 6 through 10 cover the basics of the language: expressions (Chapter 6), error handling (Chapter 7), crates and modules (Chapter 8), structs (Chapter 9), and enums and patterns (Chapter 10). It’s all right to skim a little here, but don’t skip the chapter on error handling. Trust us.

Chapter 11 covers traits and generics, the last two big concepts you need to know. Traits are like interfaces in Java or C#. They’re also the main way Rust supports integrating your types into the language itself. Chapter 12 shows how traits support operator overloading, and Chapter 13 covers many more utility traits.

Understanding traits and generics unlocks the rest of the book. Closures and iterators, two key power tools that you won’t want to miss, are covered in Chapters 14 and 15, respectively. You can read the remaining chapters in any order, or just dip into them as needed. They cover the rest of the language: collections (Chapter 16), strings and text (Chapter 17), input and output (Chapter 18), concurrency (Chapter 19), macros (Chapter 20), and unsafe code (Chapter 21).

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.

Constant width

Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.

Constant width bold

Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.

Constant width italic

Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.

Using Code Examples

Supplemental material (code examples, exercises, etc.) is available for download at https://github.com/ProgrammingRust.

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if example code is offered with this book, you may use it in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Programming Rust by Jim Blandy and Jason Orendorff (O’Reilly). Copyright 2018 Jim Blandy and Jason Orendorff, 978-1-491-92728-1.”

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at [email protected].

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Acknowledgments

The book you are holding has benefited greatly from the attention of our official technical reviewers, Brian Anderson, Matt Brubeck, J. David Eisenberg, and Jack Moffitt, and our translator, Hidemoto Nakada (中田 秀基).

Many other unofficial reviewers read early drafts and provided invaluable feedback. We would like to thank Eddy Bruel, Nick Fitzgerald, Michael Kelly, Jeffrey Lim, Jakob Olesen, Gian-Carlo Pascutto, Larry Rabinowitz, Jaroslav Šnajdr, and Joe Walker for their thoughtful comments. Jeff Walden and Nicolas Pierron were especially generous with their time, reviewing almost the entire book. Like any programming venture, a programming book thrives on quality bug reports. Thank you.

Mozilla was extremely accommodating of our work on this project, even though it fell outside our official responsibilities and competed with them for our attention. We are grateful to our managers, Dave Camp, Naveed Ihsanullah, Tom Tromey, and Joe Walker, for their support. They take a long view of what Mozilla is about; we hope these results justify the faith they placed in us.

We would also like to express our appreciation for everyone at O’Reilly who helped bring this project to fruition, especially our editors Brian MacDonald and Jeff Bleiel.

Most of all, our heartfelt thanks to our wives and children for their unwavering love, enthusiasm, and patience.