159. Rc — Single-Threaded Shared Ownership

Sun, 24 May 2026 09:00:00 +0100

The borrow checker’s one-owner rule is a feature until you’re modeling a graph, a cache, or any structure where “who owns this?” honestly has more than one answer. Rc<T> is the escape hatch: a reference-counted pointer that lets multiple owners share the same heap allocation, single-threaded, no locking, no overhead beyond a counter increment.

Smart-Pointer on rustbites

159. Rc — Single-Threaded Shared Ownership