155. Mutex — Cross-Thread Exclusive Access, With a Guard Instead of a Panic

Fri, 22 May 2026 09:00:00 +0100

Yesterday’s RefCell<T> gives you &mut through &self on a single thread — and panics the moment a second borrow shows up. Mutex<T> is the same idea wearing a hard hat: it’s Sync, so it works across threads, and instead of panicking on contention it just blocks until the other holder is done.

Mutex on rustbites

155. Mutex — Cross-Thread Exclusive Access, With a Guard Instead of a Panic