Sarcouncil Journal of Engineering and Computer Sciences

Abstract: Memory management remains a fundamental challenge in systems programming, where improper resource handling leads to memory leaks, security vulnerabilities, and system instability. Traditional languages such as C and C++ place manual memory allocation and deallocation responsibilities entirely on developers, creating opportunities for subtle yet catastrophic errors, including buffer overflows, use-after-free conditions, and dangling pointer references. These issues become increasingly problematic in large-scale applications where tracking memory usage across thousands of functions proves virtually impossible. The RUST programming language addresses these challenges through a revolutionary ownership model that guarantees memory safety without garbage collection overhead. The ownership system operates on deterministic principles where each value maintains exactly one owner responsible for cleanup, with automatic deallocation occurring when the owner exits scope. Borrowing mechanisms enable efficient data sharing while maintaining safety guarantees through compile-time validation. Unlike garbage-collected languages that introduce unpredictable pause times, RUST provides deterministic resource management crucial for real-time systems. The zero-cost abstraction principle ensures memory safety features impose no runtime overhead, producing machine code equivalent to manually optimized C programs. Implementation challenges include developer learning curves for mastering ownership semantics and complexities in multithreaded environments, requiring careful synchronization design.