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The Rust compiler specifically aims to make it impossible to have segfaults, memory leaks, and data races — so to say unsafe code “is in fact checked” is at least a little misleading. The user still needs to do additional checking for memory errors in unsafe code.

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Rust doesn't aim to make it impossible to have memory leaks: https://users.rust-lang.org/t/memory-leaks-are-memory-safe/5...

It at least eliminates what I'd estimate to be the most common cause of memory leaks (in C): missing a free. Which is the same guarantee that GCs provide.

The story is similar to C++. Almost all allocations are done by types that'll automatically call free in their destructors. But because there's no global GC, it's still possible to leak accidentally by creating a cycle in reference-counted smart pointers.

There is still the other most common source of memory leaks: putting data into long living (e.g. 'static) hash tables and having no plan for pruning it.

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