Understanding Ownership

Three Rules, Enforced at Compile Time

Ownership is why Rust ships in the Linux kernel, Windows, and Android Bluetooth without a GC. The borrow checker encodes rules that C leaves to discipline and sanitizers.

1. Each value has exactly one owner
2. Only one owner at a time
3. When the owner goes out of scope, drop runs

Moves, Copies, and Borrows

rustCopy
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• Move types (String, Vec, Box) transfer heap ownership
• Copy types (i32, bool) duplicate bits trivially
• Borrowing: many &T OR one &mut T at a time

For this exercise, you will trigger move errors on purpose, then fix them with borrows. This task asks you to explain what the compiler rejected, because those error messages are the onboarding path every Rust systems hire still walks.

Keep the relevant man page, ABI doc, or Rust reference chapter open while you work. When your output disagrees with the reference implementation on the same machine, the mismatch is usually an alignment rule, an off-by-one terminator, or a register slot you misread in GDB. Skim the official documentation for the tool or ABI named in the exercise; the prose changes, but register roles, syscall numbers, and ownership rules stay stable across releases.