L3.6.md

L3.6 — Rust error handling patterns for systems programming

Date: 2025-10-04

Author: Community Contributor (placeholder)

Estimated time

30–45 minutes

Objectives

• Introduce common error handling patterns in Rust useful for low-level systems code.
• Show examples using Result, Option, thiserror, and anyhow.
• Discuss trade-offs when writing code intended for kernel or low-level contexts.

Prerequisites

• Familiarity with basic Rust syntax and ownership (Module 3 content).

Content

• Brief explanation of Result<T, E> and pattern matching.
• Using ? for early returns and converting errors with From.
• When to prefer thiserror vs anyhow in libraries vs binaries.

Exercises

• Rewrite a small function to return Result instead of panicking.
• Create a small enum of error types and implement From for conversions.

Contributor notes

Placeholder lesson — expand with code snippets and references to rust-lang docs.