Rust’s PhantomData is a marker type that seems to do… nothing. It adds no runtime cost, holds no data, and often gets dismissed as boilerplate.
But under the hood, it powers some of the most powerful zero-cost abstractions in the language. From Serde and smart pointers to Axum and custom lifetimes—it’s the invisible compiler signal you didn’t know you needed.
In this article, I break down:
Why generic code breaks without PhantomData
How it enforces lifetimes and variance at compile time
How to build a zero-cost, type-safe resource guard with it
đź”— Read the full story:
https://medium.com/@ashishjsharda/rusts-phantom-power-the-surprising-role-of-phantomdata-in-compile-time-magic-18648829cafe
đź‘» Sometimes, the strongest tools leave no footprint.
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