Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the borrow syntax (&x) a reference while vanilla (x) is by value? Or are both passed by reference but with different ownership affects? Reason I'm asking is I got hung up the other day on passing a String to a function that accepted &str which someone explained to me Strings dereference to &str but I think I just ended up more confused.
> Is the borrow syntax (&x) a reference while vanilla (x) is by value? Or are both passed by reference but with different ownership affects? This is briefly addressed in the FAQs: "What is the difference between passing by value, consuming, moving, and transferring ownership? These are different terms for the same thing. In all cases, it means the value has been moved to another owner, and moved out of the possession…
&String will coerce to &str thanks to Deref coercions.