e016: RefCells and code smells

New Rustacean

Digging deeper on smart pointers and mutability with Cell and RefCell.

Notes

What are the Cell and RefCell types, and when should we use them?

Today, we follow up both the detailed discussion of smart pointers in e015 and the closely related discussion in Interview 2 with Raph Levien, and look at two types you need to have a good idea how to deal with if you want to use these smart pointer types more ergonomically—that is, how to use them without feeling like you’re beating your head against a wall!

Links

• Rust 1.10
  • blog post
  • full release notes
  • cdylib
    • RFC: text | discussion
    • implementation
• rustup 0.3.0 release
• Integer32 (Carol Nichols’ and Jake Goulding’s new Rust consultancy)
  • announcement blog post
  • reddit discussion
• IntelliJ Rust
  • reddit discussion
• Tango: source | talk
• Cell and RefCell:
  • Cell Types in The Rust Programming Language
  • Standard library:
    • std::cell module docs (detailed explanation, complementary to the book)
    • Cell docs (at std::cell::Cell)
    • RefCell docs (at stc::cell::RefCell)

Sponsors

• Aleksey Pirogov
• Chris Palmer
• Daniel Collin
• Derek Morr
• Doug Reeves
• Eric Fulmer
• Hamza Sheikh
• Jakub “Limeth” Hlusička
• Keith Gray
• Lachlan Collins
• Leif Arne Storset
• Luca Schmid
• Micael Bergeron
• Michael Clayton
• Pascal Hertleif
• Ralph Giles (“rillian”)
• Ralph “FriarTech” Loizzo
• Raph Levien
• reddraggone9
• Ryan Ollos
• Vesa Kaihlavirta
• William Roe

(Thanks to the couple people donating who opted out of the reward tier, as well. You know who you are!)

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Contact

• New Rustacean:
  • Twitter: @newrustacean
  • Email: [e-mail]
• Chris Krycho
  • GitHub: chriskrycho
  • Twitter: @chriskrycho