[TheZenPsycho]

just offhand, from my understanding, ~ signifies rust's pointer type. It's different from C's pointer type in subtle ways, so the symbol is different, to force reader to actually look into it, and understand what it does different instead of just assuming it's just like C's.

There's also the advantage that there's no way to conflict with the * multiplication operator.

[dbaupp]

`~` is just one pointer type; there's & and * also built-in to the language (and @, but that's moving to the standard lib); and Rust provides the control required for implementing arbitrary "smart-pointers" (e.g. reference counting is a library pointer).

~ is an owned pointer (like unique_ptr in C++); & is a "reference" or borrowed pointer (allowing access to data without taking ownership); * is a raw/unsafe pointer, and is identical to C's pointers.

Also, the * pointer doesn't conflict with multiplication because they can never occur in an ambiguous context:

  foo * bar = NULL; // C

  let bar: *Foo = std::ptr::null(); // Rust

  let bar = std::ptr::null(); // Rust, using type inference