This is a standard operator found in many programming languages, including ones with GC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_navigation_operator https://en.wiki

This is a standard operator found in many programming languages, including ones with GC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_navigation_operator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_navigation_operator To the contrary of what you're suggesting, I think Rust has done a great job eliminating a lot of the previous special-cased syntax and rebuilding things upon a simplified set of core primitives.