Async/Await & Tokio in Rust

From the Rust cheat sheet · Async Programming · verified Jul 2026

Async/Await & Tokio

Write async functions and use the tokio runtime.

rust

// Add to Cargo.toml:
// [dependencies]
// tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let result = fetch_data().await;
    println!("{result}");
}

async fn fetch_data() -> String {
    // .await pauses until the future completes
    "data".to_string()
}

💡 async fn returns a Future — nothing happens until you .await it

⚡ tokio::join! runs futures concurrently; sequential .await runs them one after another

📌 Use tokio::sync::Mutex (not std::sync::Mutex) in async code — it doesn't block the runtime

🟢 tokio::spawn creates lightweight tasks — much cheaper than OS threads

asyncawaittokiofutures

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