RefCell\<T\>

Introduction

Interior mutability is a design pattern in Rust that allows you to mutate data even when there are immutable references to that data; normally, this action is disallowed by the borrowing rules. To mutate data, the pattern uses unsafe code inside a data structure to bend Rust’s usual rules that govern mutation and borrowing. We can use types that use the interior mutability pattern when we can ensure that the borrowing rules will be followed at runtime, even though the compiler can’t guarantee that. The unsafe code involved is then wrapped in a safe API, and the outer type is still immutable.

Reason to choose RefCell<T>

Because RefCell<T> allows mutable borrows checked at runtime, you can mutate the value inside the RefCell<T> even when the RefCell<T> is immutable.

Example

This won’t compile:

fn main() {
    let x = 5;
    let y = &mut x;
}

This will:

#[derive(Debug)]
enum List {
    Cons(Rc<RefCell<i32>>, Rc<List>),
    Nil,
}
 
use crate::List::{Cons, Nil};
use std::cell::RefCell;
use std::rc::Rc;
 
fn main() {
    let value = Rc::new(RefCell::new(5));
 
    let a = Rc::new(Cons(Rc::clone(&value), Rc::new(Nil)));
 
    let b = Cons(Rc::new(RefCell::new(3)), Rc::clone(&a));
    let c = Cons(Rc::new(RefCell::new(4)), Rc::clone(&a));
 
    *value.borrow_mut() += 10;
 
    println!("a after = {:?}", a);
    println!("b after = {:?}", b);
    println!("c after = {:?}", c);
}