# 1.0.0[−][src]Module alloc::boxed

A pointer type for heap allocation.

`Box<T>`, casually referred to as a 'box', provides the simplest form of heap allocation in Rust. Boxes provide ownership for this allocation, and drop their contents when they go out of scope.

# Examples

Move a value from the stack to the heap by creating a `Box`:

    let val: u8 = 5;
    let boxed: Box<u8> = Box::new(val);

Move a value from a `Box` back to the stack by dereferencing:

    let boxed: Box<u8> = Box::new(5);
    let val: u8 = *boxed;

Creating a recursive data structure:

    #[derive(Debug)]
    enum List<T> {
        Cons(T, Box<List<T>>),
        Nil,
    }

    fn main() {
        let list: List<i32> = List::Cons(1, Box::new(List::Cons(2, Box::new(List::Nil))));
        println!("{:?}", list);
    }

This will print `Cons(1, Cons(2, Nil))`.

Recursive structures must be boxed, because if the definition of `Cons` looked like this:

ⓘThis example deliberately fails to compile

    Cons(T, List<T>),

It wouldn't work. This is because the size of a `List` depends on how many elements are in the list, and so we don't know how much memory to allocate for a `Cons`. By introducing a `Box`, which has a defined size, we know how big `Cons` needs to be.

## Structs

Box | A pointer type for heap allocation.

## Traits

FnBox

[
Experimental
]

`FnBox` is a version of the `FnOnce` intended for use with boxed closure objects. The idea is that where one would normally store a `Box<FnOnce()>` in a data structure, you should use `Box<FnBox()>`. The two traits behave essentially the same, except that a `FnBox` closure can only be called if it is boxed. (Note that `FnBox` may be deprecated in the future if `Box<FnOnce()>` closures become directly usable.)

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