Programming Tutorials

  One of the most abrupt complexity spikes in Rust occurs when you attempt to define a struct where one field refers to another field within the same struct. This is the "Self-Referential Struct" problem. It is a mandatory hurdle for developers building custom async executors, zero-copy parsers, or implementing intrusive linked lists. The compiler will reject any naive attempt to create this structure with lifetime errors, usually citing that a value is being moved while borrowed. To solve this, we must drop down to  std::pin  and raw pointers, manually enforcing the invariants that the borrow checker cannot. The Root Cause: Moves and Memory Addresses To understand why Rust forbids self-references by default, you must understand the mechanical implication of a "Move." In Rust, types are  Unpin  by default. This means the compiler is free to memcpy the bits of your struct from one stack slot to another, or from the stack to the heap, at virtually any time (e.g., ...