What is Rust and how to start?

Rust is a modern systems programming language known for its focus on memory safety and performance. It combines low-level control with high-level abstractions, making it suitable for a wide range of applications.

It provides memory safety without the need for garbage collection and allows fine-grained control over system resources. Rust’s syntax is similar to C/C++, making it familiar to developers with experience in those languages.

To start with Rust, follow these steps:

Install Rust

Visit the official Rust website at https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install and follow the instructions to install Rust on your system. The installation process is straightforward and includes the Rust compiler (rustc) and the package manager and build tool called Cargo.

Or you can use the Rust online compiler at https://play.rust-lang.org

Hello Rust

Let’s start with a simple "Hello, Rust!" example. open your preferred code editor and put the below code in it then save it as file with the name hello.rs:

fn main()
{
    println!("Hello, Rust!");
}

To compile the above crate, you have two options:

• Using the rustc (rust compiler)
• Using Cargo

But first, let’s know what is crate

Crates

hello.rs file called crate, it is like a module in C/C++, a crate can be compiled into a binary or a library.

1. Rust compiler

Rustc is the compiler that compiles the rust file "hello.rs" to a native runnable file (executable) e.g "hello.exe".
by running

rustc hello.rs

By default, rustc will produce a binary from a crate, and it can be edited by –crate-type flag to lib.

rustc --crate-type=lib hello.rs
# this will create: libhello.rlib file

2. Rust Cargo

Cargo is Rust’s build system and package manager. To use Cargo, create a new file called Cargo.toml.
TOML (Tom’s Obvious Minimal Language) is a simple format used to specify project configurations.

In Cargo.toml, you can specify the project’s name, version, and authors:

[package]
name = "hello_world"
version = "0.0.1"
authors = ["Amr ]

after making this file you can just run the project by:

cargo build

This command will create a target directory with a debug folder, containing the compiled executable.

To run the executable using cargo you can run this command:

cargo run

If the project hasn’t been compiled yet, this command will compile it before running.

You can also create a new Rust project with Cargo using the following command:

cargo new hello_world --bin

This will create a new project called hello_world, configured as a binary project.

With the basic setup in place, you can continue exploring Rust’s features and syntax. Rust has an extensive standard library that provides many useful functionalities. You can also explore Rust’s documentation, community resources, and online tutorials to deepen your understanding and learn advanced concepts.