Yes, the idea is that you only create them temporarily. Mutability is also possible to some extent with these "smart" pointers. It gets a bit trickier and less

Yes, the idea is that you only create them temporarily. Mutability is also possible to some extent with these "smart" pointers. It gets a bit trickier and less ergonomic, though. See https://play.rust-lang.org/?gist=fbf1c24397e7020c95774bf09060b6fd&version=stable&mode=debug&edition=2015 https://play.rust-lang.org/?gist=fbf1c24397e7020c95774bf0906... Another option would be to store something like "Rc<RefCell<Container>>" instead of "&'a mut Container", in which case you will be able to achieve something that behaves like multiple mutable references (with all the concurrency issues of them).