Rust’s lifetimes can be a bit challenging at first, but they are a powerful feature that ensures memory safety without needing a garbage collector. Let’s dive into the concept with some explanations and examples.

What are Lifetimes?

Lifetimes are a way of expressing the scope during which a reference is valid. In Rust, every reference has a lifetime, which is the span during which that reference is allowed to be valid. The Rust compiler uses lifetimes to ensure that you never have invalid references, preventing issues like dangling pointers.

Why Lifetimes?

Lifetimes prevent data races and ensure that references do not outlive the data they point to. This is particularly important in a systems programming language like Rust, where direct memory management is involved.

Stack vs Heap data

Rust lifetime make sure stack allocated memory that are referenced outside of its scope results in a compile time error.