Learn the basics of Rust programming from scratch, starting with the syntax, then moving to the core components of Rust.

Become a Rust Professional

In this module, we’ll start with the basics of the Rust programming language, and learn the syntax, philosophy, and the anatomy of Rust. With that in hand, we’ll move to some of the more unique parts of Rust, such as expression-oriented programming, ownership, and its robust type system.
In the latter half of the module, we’ll work through some of the core components of Rust, such as references, memory management, mutability, traits, slices, and generics.

The Ultimate Guide to Rust Programming

If you remember back from *Anatomy of Rust*, we said that any expression can be converted into an expression statement by putting a semicolon at the end. That’s what happens with all of our `println!` macro calls. The  `println!` part is an expression; following it with a semicolon turns it into a statement. But if you look at the example above, I never put a semicolon after the `if` expression. Technically, you can put them there if you want, but that’s not a recommended style in Rust.

There’s one other rule about expression statements that I didn’t mention previously. If you have a block-like expression (such as an `if` expression), and if that expression evaluates to unit, you’re allowed to leave off the semicolon. We’ve actually been doing that in a lot of examples already, but just haven’t talked about it. For example, we’ve seen code like this with blocks quite a bit:

Hello World and variables

Anatomy of Rust

Functions

Boolean

Conditionals

Mutable variables and while loops

Structs and ownership

References

Methods

Strings

Arrays, Vecs, and slices

Traits

Enums

Iterators and for loops

Early exit

Appendix

Conclusion

A Note on Semicolons