Rust Brain Teasers

The Rust programming language is consistent and does its best to avoid surprising the programmer. Like all languages, though, Rust still has its quirks. But these quirks present a teaching opportunity. In this book, you’ll work through a series of brain teasers that will challenge your understanding of Rust. By understanding the gaps in your knowledge, you can become better at what you do and avoid mistakes. Many of the teasers in this book come from the author’s own experience creating software. Others derive from commonly asked questions in the Rust community. Regardless of their origin, these brain teasers are fun, and let’s face it: who doesn’t love a good puzzle, right?

What better way to exercise your brain and increase your Rust programming knowledge than with a collection of dynamic brain teasers? As you read through each of these puzzles and try to work out the answers, you’ll not only learn about Rust’s unique quirks and peculiarities, you’ll also have loads of fun along the way.

Dive right in and get started with example code and sample problems that cover numbers and text, shadowing and memory, and everything in between. Try to figure out why a particular program won’t compile, why it produces unexpected output, or why it panics and terminates with an error message. Once you’ve run the code and read the answer, it’s time to get to the heart of the matter with a detailed explanation. Learn why a program produced the result it did, and discover how similar issues might affect the code you write in your own programs, even in production. Sourced from engaging discussions within the Rust community, real-world problems, and even reader feedback, these challenges will certainly surprise, enlighten, and entertain you.

Are you ready to experience Rust like never before? Then sharpen your brain and get ready for a challenge!

Table of Contents

Puzzle 1. Three and a Bit

Puzzle 2. Non-standard Input

Puzzle 3. Type Conversion

Puzzle 4. Byte-Sized Chunks

Puzzle 5. How Long Is a String?

Puzzle 6. Please Reboot the Universe

Puzzle 7. There and Back Again

Puzzle 8. Walks Like a Duck, Quacks Like a Duck

Puzzle 9. Out of Order

Puzzle 10. X Marks the Spot

Puzzle 11. Stacking Boxes

Puzzle 12. Amnesia

Puzzle 13. Reverse the Polarity of the Neutron Flow

Puzzle 14. Structure Sizing

Puzzle 15. To Infinity

Puzzle 16. Double or Nothing

Puzzle 17. How Long Is a Vector?

Puzzle 18. Mutable lmmutables

Puzzle 19. Sleepless in Tokio

Puzzle 20. Hello, Bonjour

Puzzle 21. Tying a Gordian Knot

Puzzle 22. Waiting for Godot

Puzzle 23. Constant Loops

Puzzle 24. Home on the Range

What You Need:

This book assumes you have some knowledge of the Rust programming language. To work through the brain teasers in this book, you’ll need a working Rust environment on any platform. You can install Rust by visiting https://rustup.rs/. You’ll also need a text editor or Rust-friendly IDE.

About the Author

Herbert Wolverson has worked as a programmer and indie game developer since the late 1990s. He’s taught programming and IT skills at a variety of levels, contributes to multiple Open Source projects, and is active in the game development scene.