The **move** operation in Rust is similar to a [shallow copy](https://www.educative.io/answers/deep-copying-vs-shallow-copying) in other programming languages. This concept can be seen in action when assigning a variable to another variable, or when passing a variable to a function as a parameter. But first, to understand things better, let's briefly introduce the concept of **ownership**.

# Ownership

Every value in Rust has a variable that is known as its *owner*. There can only be one owner at a time that is *dropped* when it goes out of scope. Dropping is equivalent to cleaning the memory allocated on the heap when it can no longer be accessed.

## Moving ownership

fn main() {
  let x = String::from("Hello World!"); // x is the first owner
  let y = x; // y becomes the new owner

  println!("y = {}", y); // Using 'x' will give an error
}

In the code above, the `x` variable is the first owner of *Hello World!*. Since the `String` data type in Rust does not implement the `Copy` trait, its ownership gets transferred to `y` in line 3. If `x` loses its status as the owner, using it will generate a compile-time error.

However, if a `Copy` type (e.g., an integer) is used, a *move* won't occur. Instead, the value of `x` will be *copied* into `y`; so, `x` still remains usable after it is assigned to `y`:

fn main() {
  let x = 10; // x is the owner
  let y = x;  // y is the owner of another value

  // Both 'x' and 'y' are usable:
  println!("x = {}", x);
  println!("y = {}", y);
}

Moving ownership in Rust

Ownership

Moving ownership