Tinkering with Rust - an underscore

Whilst tinkering with the Kata Containers kata-agent component, I was trying to work out what the underscore meant in this line of code: -

let _ = spec.save(config_path.to_str().unwrap());

Thankfully, this GitHub issue: -

Documet let _ = ... behavior saliently, or even warn about it #40096

led me to this section of the Rust language book: -

Ignoring Values in a Pattern

You’ve seen that it’s sometimes useful to ignore values in a pattern, such as in the last arm of a match, to get a catchall that doesn’t actually do anything but does account for all remaining possible values. There are a few ways to ignore entire values or parts of values in a pattern: using the _ pattern (which you’ve seen), using the _ pattern within another pattern, using a name that starts with an underscore, or using .. to ignore remaining parts of a value. Let’s explore how and why to use each of these patterns.

and: -

We’ve used the underscore (_) as a wildcard pattern that will match any value but not bind to the value. Although the underscore _ pattern is especially useful as the last arm in a match expression, we can use it in any pattern, including function parameters, as shown in Listing 18-17.

Ignoring an Entire Value with _