Beyond the &
- Rust has a number of kinds of smart pointers, both in the standard library and defined by users.
- Still, some operations that are possible with built-in references are not possible to perform with user-defined smart pointers.
- Tyler Mandry, lead of the Rust project's language team, spoke at RustConf 2026 about the lengthy effort to change that, and make smart pointers just as flexible as built-in references.
Unverified
- Rust has a number of kinds of smart pointers, both in the standard library and defined by users.
- Still, some operations that are possible with built-in references are not possible to perform with user-defined smart pointers.
- Tyler Mandry, lead of the Rust project's language team, spoke at RustConf 2026 about the lengthy effort to change that, and make smart pointers just as flexible as built-in references.
Sources: Lwn