Running Code on Cleanup with the Drop Trait - The Rust Programming Language

## Running Code on Cleanup with the `Drop` Trait

The second trait important to the smart pointer pattern is `Drop`, which lets you customize what happens when a value is about to go out of scope. You can provide an implementation for the `Drop` trait on any type, and the code you specify can be used to release resources like files or network connections. We’re introducing `Drop` in the context of smart pointers because the functionality of the `Drop` trait is almost always used when implementing a smart pointer. For example, `Box<T>` customizes `Drop` to deallocate the space on the heap that the box points to.

In some languages, the programmer must call code to free memory or resources every time they finish using an instance of a smart pointer. If they forget, the system might become overloaded and crash. In Rust, you can specify that a particular bit of code be run whenever a value goes out of scope, and the compiler will insert this code automatically. As a result, you don’t need to be careful about placing cleanup code everywhere in a program that an instance of a particular type is finished with—you still won’t leak resources!

Specify the code to run when a value goes out of scope by implementing the `Drop` trait. The `Drop` trait requires you to implement one method named `drop` that takes a mutable reference to `self`. To see when Rust calls `drop`, let’s implement `drop` with `println!` statements for now.

Listing 15-14 shows a `CustomSmartPointer` struct whose only custom functionality is that it will print `Dropping CustomSmartPointer!` when the instance goes out of scope. This example demonstrates when Rust runs the `drop` function.

Filename: src/main.rs

    struct CustomSmartPointer {
        data: String,
    }

    impl Drop for CustomSmartPointer {
        fn drop(&mut self) {
            println!("Dropping CustomSmartPointer with data `{}`!", self.data);
        }
    }

    fn main() {
        let c = CustomSmartPointer { data: String::from("my stuff") };
        let d = CustomSmartPointer { data: String::from("other stuff") };
        println!("CustomSmartPointers created.");
    }

Listing 15-14: A `CustomSmartPointer` struct that implements the `Drop` trait where we would put our cleanup code

The `Drop` trait is included in the prelude, so we don’t need to bring it into scope. We implement the `Drop` trait on `CustomSmartPointer` and provide an implementation for the `drop` method that calls `println!`. The body of the `drop` function is where you would place any logic that you wanted to run when an instance of your type goes out of scope. We’re printing some text here to demonstrate when Rust will call `drop`.

In `main`, we create two instances of `CustomSmartPointer` and then print `CustomSmartPointers created.`. At the end of `main`, our instances of `CustomSmartPointer` will go out of scope, and Rust will call the code we put in the `drop` method, printing our final message. Note that we didn’t need to call the `drop` method explicitly.

When we run this program, we’ll see the following output:

    CustomSmartPointers created.
    Dropping CustomSmartPointer with data `other stuff`!
    Dropping CustomSmartPointer with data `my stuff`!

Rust automatically called `drop` for us when our instances went out of scope, calling the code we specified. Variables are dropped in the reverse order of their creation, so `d` was dropped before `c`. This example gives you a visual guide to how the `drop` method works; usually you would specify the cleanup code that your type needs to run rather than a print message.

### Dropping a Value Early with `std::mem::drop`

Unfortunately, it’s not straightforward to disable the automatic `drop` functionality. Disabling `drop` isn’t usually necessary; the whole point of the `Drop` trait is that it’s taken care of automatically. Occasionally, however, you might want to clean up a value early. One example is when using smart pointers that manage locks: you might want to force the `drop` method that releases the lock to run so other code in the same scope can acquire the lock. Rust doesn’t let you call the `Drop` trait’s `drop` method manually; instead you have to call the `std::mem::drop` function provided by the standard library if you want to force a value to be dropped before the end of its scope.

If we try to call the `Drop` trait’s `drop` method manually by modifying the `main` function from Listing 15-14, as shown in Listing 15-15, we’ll get a compiler error:

Filename: src/main.rs

    fn main() {
        let c = CustomSmartPointer { data: String::from("some data") };
        println!("CustomSmartPointer created.");
        c.drop();
        println!("CustomSmartPointer dropped before the end of main.");
    }

Listing 15-15: Attempting to call the `drop` method from the `Drop` trait manually to clean up early

When we try to compile this code, we’ll get this error:

    error[E0040]: explicit use of destructor method
      --> src/main.rs:14:7
       |
    14 |     c.drop();
       |       ^^^^ explicit destructor calls not allowed

This error message states that we’re not allowed to explicitly call `drop`. The error message uses the term destructor, which is the general programming term for a function that cleans up an instance. A destructor is analogous to a constructor, which creates an instance. The `drop` function in Rust is one particular destructor.

Rust doesn’t let us call `drop` explicitly because Rust would still automatically call `drop` on the value at the end of `main`. This would be a double free error because Rust would be trying to clean up the same value twice.

We can’t disable the automatic insertion of `drop` when a value goes out of scope, and we can’t call the `drop` method explicitly. So, if we need to force a value to be cleaned up early, we can use the `std::mem::drop` function.

The `std::mem::drop` function is different from the `drop` method in the `Drop` trait. We call it by passing the value we want to force to be dropped early as an argument. The function is in the prelude, so we can modify `main` in Listing 15-15 to call the `drop` function, as shown in Listing 15-16:

Filename: src/main.rs

    # struct CustomSmartPointer {
    #     data: String,
    # }
    #
    # impl Drop for CustomSmartPointer {
    #     fn drop(&mut self) {
    #         println!("Dropping CustomSmartPointer!");
    #     }
    # }
    #
    fn main() {
        let c = CustomSmartPointer { data: String::from("some data") };
        println!("CustomSmartPointer created.");
        drop(c);
        println!("CustomSmartPointer dropped before the end of main.");
    }

Listing 15-16: Calling `std::mem::drop` to explicitly drop a value before it goes out of scope

Running this code will print the following:

    CustomSmartPointer created.
    Dropping CustomSmartPointer with data `some data`!
    CustomSmartPointer dropped before the end of main.

The text `Dropping CustomSmartPointer with data `some data`!` is printed between the `CustomSmartPointer created.` and `CustomSmartPointer dropped before the end of main.` text, showing that the `drop` method code is called to drop `c` at that point.

You can use code specified in a `Drop` trait implementation in many ways to make cleanup convenient and safe: for instance, you could use it to create your own memory allocator! With the `Drop` trait and Rust’s ownership system, you don’t have to remember to clean up because Rust does it automatically.

You also don’t have to worry about problems resulting from accidentally cleaning up values still in use: the ownership system that makes sure references are always valid also ensures that `drop` gets called only once when the value is no longer being used.

Now that we’ve examined `Box<T>` and some of the characteristics of smart pointers, let’s look at a few other smart pointers defined in the standard library.