21.20 Summary

Rust’s pattern matching provides powerful ways to destructure data and handle different scenarios with clarity and safety. Key points from this chapter include:

  • Patterns enable destructuring tuples, structs, enums, slices, arrays, and references.
  • Exhaustive Matching prevents any enum variant from going unhandled.
  • Refutable vs. Irrefutable patterns ensure you use the right constructs for possible mismatches.
  • Ignoring Data with _, _x, or .. lets you focus on the parts you need.
  • Advanced Features such as guards, @ bindings, and OR patterns (|) support complex conditions.
  • Simpler Forms like if let, while let, and let else streamline single-case matching or early returns.
  • Destructuring is not limited to match; it also appears in for loops, function parameters, and closures.
  • Comparison to C: Rust’s pattern matching extends far beyond integer switch statements, offering a robust, exhaustive, and safe alternative.

By adopting these pattern matching capabilities, you’ll write clearer, more concise Rust code—code that leaves fewer edge cases unaddressed.