[artikae]

A Gc<T> that can't give you a pointer inside seems almost unusable in the context of Rust. Pointers are not a narrow use case; references are pointers.

Rust APIs are largely built around references. If you were to put a Vec<T> (dynamic array) into a pointerless Gc<T>, you would be almost entirely unable to access its contents. The only way to access it would be swap it with an empty Vec, access it, then swap it back a-la Cell. You wouldn't even be able to clone the Vec without storing a dummy version in its place during the call.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/std/cell/struct.Cell.html#m...

[gwbas1c]

You miss the point: I'm referring to cases where you pass pointers from one language into another. In that case, because GC is opt-in, it's the wrong approach for managing whatever you're passing into the non-Rust language.

In your case, do you need to get a pointer to a GC<T> and use it within Rust? I haven't worked with Rust at that level yet, so perhaps I'm ignorant of a more common use case.