What is memory safety in Rust and why is it important?

What is memory safety in Rust and why is it important?

Memory safety in Rust ensures that programs do not access invalid memory, preventing bugs and security vulnerabilities.

How does Rust achieve memory safety without a garbage collector?

Rust uses a system of ownership with rules that the compiler checks at compile time, eliminating the need for a garbage collector.

Can you explain the concepts of ownership, borrowing, and lifetimes?

Ownership means each value has a single owner. Borrowing allows references to values without taking ownership, and lifetimes ensure references are valid.

What are some common pitfalls in memory management that Rust helps avoid?

Rust helps avoid null pointer dereferences, buffer overflows, and data races, which are common in languages without memory safety.

Are there any performance trade-offs with Rust's memory safety features?

Generally, Rust's memory safety features do not incur runtime overhead, but there may be some compile-time costs due to checks.