What Are Move Semantics?

Move semantics let a value hand its underlying resources, such as a heap buffer, to another value by transferring ownership instead of duplicating the data. The source object is left valid but emptied so it can be safely destroyed. This turns expensive copies of large objects into cheap pointer-level transfers.

Why it matters

Moving instead of copying avoids needless allocations and deep copies, which is a major performance win for containers and large objects. It also expresses ownership transfer clearly in the type system.

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