Chapter 7: Control Flow in Rust

Control flow constructs are fundamental concepts in programming, directing the order in which code is executed based on conditions and repetition. For programmers coming from C, Rust’s control flow mechanisms will seem familiar in many ways, but there are key differences and unique features that enhance safety and expressiveness.

This chapter explores Rust’s primary control flow tools:

• Conditional execution using if, else if, and else.
• Rust’s powerful pattern matching construct: match.
• Looping constructs: loop, while, and for.
• The ability to use if and loop as expressions that produce values.
• Control transfer keywords: break and continue, including labeled versions.
• Key distinctions compared to control flow in C.

Rust deliberately avoids hidden control flow mechanisms like try/catch exception handling found in some other languages. Instead, potential failures are managed explicitly using the Result and Option enum types, promoting predictable code paths. These types will be covered in detail in Chapters 14 and 15.

Advanced pattern matching features, including if let and while let (which combine conditional checks with pattern matching), will be explored in Chapter 21 when we delve deeper into patterns.