What will there Rust reserved keywords do: abstract, do, final, virtual, override

88 points nikitarevenco 47 comments

I found this page which lists all reserved keywords for Rust: https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/keywords.html

I did research and compiled a list of speculations / rfcs that use these keywords:

Rust was intended to be more of an OOP language in the early days so they reserved keywords like abstract, override, virtual and final. But they could have freed them at any point in the last decade but chose not to. This means it could still be used for something but for what..?

unsized only makes sense as sugar for !Sized but is this really necessary? Rust tries hard not to special case the standard library and just adding syntax for a built-in item seems like isn't necessary. I didn't find an RFC for it though so it could be used for more than that

do is used for the do yeet in https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/96373 but the syntax will change when its stabilized so I don't count it