Meaning of the ampersand '&' and star '*' symbols in Rust

Question

Despite thoroughly reading the documentation, I\'m rather confused about the meaning of the & and * symbol in Rust, and more generally about wh

Answer 1

From the docs for std::ops::Add:

impl<'a, 'b> Add<&'a i32> for &'b i32
impl<'a> Add<&'a i32> for i32
impl<'a> Add for &'a i32
impl Add for i32

It seems the binary + operator for numbers is implemented for combinations of shared (but not mutable) references of the operands and owned versions of the operands. It has nothing to do with automatic dereferencing.