Mutabilidade Interior

In some situations, it’s necessary to modify data behind a shared (read-only) reference. For example, a shared data structure might have an internal cache, and wish to update that cache from read-only methods.

The “interior mutability” pattern allows exclusive (mutable) access behind a shared reference. The standard library provides several ways to do this, all while still ensuring safety, typically by performing a runtime check.

RefCell

use std::cell::RefCell;
use std::rc::Rc;

#[derive(Debug, Default)]
struct Node {
    value: i64,
    children: Vec<Rc<RefCell<Node>>>,
}

impl Node {
    fn new(value: i64) -> Rc<RefCell<Node>> {
        Rc::new(RefCell::new(Node { value, ..Node::default() }))
    }

    fn sum(&self) -> i64 {
        self.value + self.children.iter().map(|c| c.borrow().sum()).sum::<i64>()
    }
}

fn main() {
    let root = Node::new(1);
    root.borrow_mut().children.push(Node::new(5));
    let subtree = Node::new(10);
    subtree.borrow_mut().children.push(Node::new(11));
    subtree.borrow_mut().children.push(Node::new(12));
    root.borrow_mut().children.push(subtree);

    println!("grafo: {root:#?}");
    println!("soma do grafo: {}", root.borrow().sum());
}

Cell

Cell wraps a value and allows getting or setting the value, even with a shared reference to the Cell. However, it does not allow any references to the value. Since there are no references, borrowing rules cannot be broken.