Rc<T>, the Reference Counted Smart Pointer

In the majority of cases, ownership is clear: you know exactly which variable owns a given value. However, there are cases when a single value may have multiple owners. For example, in graph data structures, multiple edges may point to the same node, and that node is conceptually owned by all of the edges that point to it. A node shouldn’t be cleaned up unless it doesn’t have any edges pointing to it.

In order to enable multiple ownership, Rust has a type called Rc<T>. Its name is an abbreviation for reference counting. Reference counting means keeping track of the number of references to a value in order to know if a value is still in use or not. If there are zero references to a value, the value can be cleaned up without any references becoming invalid.

Imagine it like a TV in a family room. When one person enters to watch TV, they turn it on. Others can come into the room and watch the TV. When the last person leaves the room, they turn the TV off because it’s no longer being used. If someone turns the TV off while others are still watching it, there’d be uproar from the remaining TV watchers!

Rc<T> is used when we want to allocate some data on the heap for multiple parts of our program to read, and we can’t determine at compile time which part will finish using the data last. If we did know which part would finish last, we could just make that the owner of the data and the normal ownership rules enforced at compile time would kick in.

Note that Rc<T> is only for use in single-threaded scenarios; Chapter 16 on concurrency will cover how to do reference counting in multithreaded programs.

Using Rc<T> to Share Data

Let’s return to our cons list example from Listing 15-6, as we defined it using Box<T>. This time, we want to create two lists that both share ownership of a third list, which conceptually will look something like Figure 15-11:

Figure 15-11: Two lists, b and c, sharing ownership of a third list, a

We’ll create list a that contains 5 and then 10, then make two more lists: b that starts with 3 and c that starts with 4. Both b and c lists will then continue on to the first a list containing 5 and 10. In other words, both lists will try to share the first list containing 5 and 10.

Trying to implement this using our definition of List with Box<T> won’t work, as shown in Listing 15-12:

Filename: src/main.rs

enum List {
    Cons(i32, Box<List>),
    Nil,
}

use List::{Cons, Nil};

fn main() {
    let a = Cons(5,
        Box::new(Cons(10,
            Box::new(Nil))));
    let b = Cons(3, Box::new(a));
    let c = Cons(4, Box::new(a));
}

Listing 15-12: Demonstrating we’re not allowed to have two lists using Box<T> that try to share ownership of a third list

If we compile this, we get this error:

error[E0382]: use of moved value: `a`
  --> src/main.rs:13:30
   |
12 |     let b = Cons(3, Box::new(a));
   |                              - value moved here
13 |     let c = Cons(4, Box::new(a));
   |                              ^ value used here after move
   |
   = note: move occurs because `a` has type `List`, which does not
   implement the `Copy` trait

The Cons variants own the data they hold, so when we create the b list, a is moved into b and b owns a. Then, when we try to use a again when creating c, we’re not allowed to because a has been moved.

We could change the definition of Cons to hold references instead, but then we’d have to specify lifetime parameters. By specifying lifetime parameters, we’d be specifying that every element in the list will live at least as long as the list itself. The borrow checker wouldn’t let us compile let a = Cons(10, &Nil); for example, since the temporary Nil value would be dropped before a could take a reference to it.

Instead, we’ll change our definition of List to use Rc<T> in place of Box<T> as shown here in Listing 15-13. Each Cons variant now holds a value and an Rc pointing to a List. When we create b, instead of taking ownership of a, we clone the Rc that a is holding, which increases the number of references from 1 to 2 and lets a and b share ownership of the data in that Rc. We also clone a when creating c, which increases the number of references from 2 to 3. Every time we call Rc::clone, the reference count to the data within the Rc is increased, and the data won’t be cleaned up unless there are zero references to it:

Filename: src/main.rs

enum List {
    Cons(i32, Rc<List>),
    Nil,
}

use List::{Cons, Nil};
use std::rc::Rc;

fn main() {
    let a = Rc::new(Cons(5, Rc::new(Cons(10, Rc::new(Nil)))));
    let b = Cons(3, Rc::clone(&a));
    let c = Cons(4, Rc::clone(&a));
}

Listing 15-13: A definition of List that uses Rc<T>

We need to add a use statement to bring Rc into scope because it’s not in the prelude. In main, we create the list holding 5 and 10 and store it in a new Rc in a. Then when we create b and c, we call the Rc::clone function and pass a reference to the Rc in a as an argument.

We could have called a.clone() rather than Rc::clone(&a), but Rust convention is to use Rc::clone in this case. The implementation of Rc::clone doesn’t make a deep copy of all the data like most types’ implementations of clone do. Rc::clone only increments the reference count, which doesn’t take very much time. Deep copies of data can take a lot of time, so by using Rc::clone for reference counting, we can visually distinguish between the deep copy kinds of clones that might have a large impact on runtime performance and memory usage and the types of clones that increase the reference count that have a comparatively small impact on runtime performance and don’t allocate new memory.

Cloning an Rc<T> Increases the Reference Count

Let’s change our working example from Listing 15-13 so that we can see the reference counts changing as we create and drop references to the Rc in a.

In Listing 15-14, we’ll change main so that it has an inner scope around list c, so that we can see how the reference count changes when c goes out of scope. At each point in the program where the reference count changes, we’ll print out the reference count, which we can get by calling the Rc::strong_count function. We’ll talk about why this function is named strong_count rather than count in the section later in this chapter about preventing reference cycles.

Filename: src/main.rs

# enum List {
#     Cons(i32, Rc<List>),
#     Nil,
# }
#
# use List::{Cons, Nil};
# use std::rc::Rc;
#
fn main() {
    let a = Rc::new(Cons(5, Rc::new(Cons(10, Rc::new(Nil)))));
    println!("count after creating a = {}", Rc::strong_count(&a));
    let b = Cons(3, Rc::clone(&a));
    println!("count after creating b = {}", Rc::strong_count(&a));
    {
        let c = Cons(4, Rc::clone(&a));
        println!("count after creating c = {}", Rc::strong_count(&a));
    }
    println!("count after c goes out of scope = {}", Rc::strong_count(&a));
}

Listing 15-14: Printing out the reference count

This will print out:

count after creating a = 1
count after creating b = 2
count after creating c = 3
count after c goes out of scope = 2

We’re able to see that the Rc in a has an initial reference count of one, then each time we call clone, the count goes up by one. When c goes out of scope, the count goes down by one. We don’t have to call a function to decrease the reference count like we have to call Rc::clone to increase the reference count; the implementation of the Drop trait decreases the reference count automatically when an Rc value goes out of scope.

What we can’t see from this example is that when b and then a go out of scope at the end of main, the count is then 0, and the Rc is cleaned up completely at that point. Using Rc allows a single value to have multiple owners, and the count will ensure that the value remains valid as long as any of the owners still exist.

Rc<T> allows us to share data between multiple parts of our program for reading only, via immutable references. If Rc<T> allowed us to have multiple mutable references too, we’d be able to violate one of the the borrowing rules that we discussed in Chapter 4: multiple mutable borrows to the same place can cause data races and inconsistencies. But being able to mutate data is very useful! In the next section, we’ll discuss the interior mutability pattern and the RefCell<T> type that we can use in conjunction with an Rc<T> to work with this restriction on immutability.