Chapter 7: Control Flow in Rust

Control flow is a fundamental aspect of any programming language, enabling decision-making, conditional execution, and repetition. For C programmers transitioning to Rust, understanding Rust’s control flow constructs—and the ways they differ from C—is crucial.

In this chapter, we’ll explore:

• Conditional statements (if, else if, else)
• Looping constructs (loop, while, for)
• Using if, loop, and while as expressions
• Key differences between Rust and C control flow

We’ll also highlight some of Rust’s more advanced control flow features that do not have exact equivalents in older languages such as C, though those will be covered in greater depth in later chapters. These include:

• Pattern matching with match (beyond simple integer matches)

Unlike some languages, Rust avoids hidden control flow paths such as exception handling with try/catch. Instead, it explicitly manages errors using the Result and Option types, which we’ll discuss in detail in Chapters 14 and 15.

Rust’s if let and while let constructs, along with the new if-let chains planned for Rust 2024, will be discussed when we explore Rust’s pattern matching in detail in Chapter 21.