Section 15.6 title is maybe a little misleading

[icefoxen]

The title for section 15.6 is "Creating Reference Cycles and Leaking Memory is Safe". At a glance this could imply that Rust magically cleans up after you somehow, which might be deceptive to new people (even though you explain exactly what you mean in the first paragraph after that title). An alternative might be to just say "Creating Reference Cycles and Leaking Memory is Not Unsafe".

It might also be worth saying that, while Rust doesn't guarantee lack of memory leaks, under most circumstances the only way it will happen is if you create cycles through refcounted pointer types. Just saying "preventing memory leaks is not one of Rust's guarantees" leaves open the possibility that safe code which does not create refcount cycles still could leak memory, which as far as I know should never happen.

[carols10cents]

What about "Creating Reference Cycles Can Leak Memory"?

[icefoxen]

That seems reasonable. I feel like there should still be some mention of memory safety involved, since that's one of Rust's big concerns, but maybe I'm trying to pack too much information into a section heading...

[carols10cents]

I do like the pithy saying "memory leaks are memory safe", but I think I worked that into the text, which is probably a better place, as you're saying.

Would you like to send in a PR or would you like me to take care of this? Either is fine with me! ❤️

[nodakai]

@icefoxen

Just saying "preventing memory leaks is not one of Rust's guarantees" leaves open the possibility that safe code which does not create refcount cycles still could leak memory, which as far as I know should never happen.

You know what...

• https://www.google.com/search?q=JavaScript+memory+leak

Nowadays more and more people are accepting to use the term "memory leak" to mean carelessly making objects' lifetime too long. As rustc will not warn you "Hey you shouldn't push this object to the static Vec, you gotta drop it quickly," I'd be very careful with making statements like "Rust can leak memory only though reference cycles or unsafe code" not to make exaggerations.

@carols10cents How about "Reference Cycles Can Leak Memory" ?