The lifetime analysis is only possible in Rust because Rust has lifetimes. Even if you write a toy Rust program where you didn't apparently write any lifetimes, they were implied and the implied lifetimes were checked - the language was constrained by the fact you didn't specify a lifetime and so the implied lifetime was checked, whereas in C you can't express the lifetime and so it can't be checked.
The most glorious example of this is comparing C23's #embed with Rust's include_bytes! macro. These are both ways to include a file full of data into your program - which if you're a C programmer you will know was really annoying to do cross-platform before #embed
In C23 the data is just some literals like 1, 86, 69, 204 that are promised to be one unsigned byte each and you do with them whatever you want. How long do they live? -shrug- in some sense forever, but, then again maybe not, it depends.
But in Rust it's specifically &'static [u8; N] -- a reference to an array of N bytes which has the 'static lifetime, it lives potentially for the life of your program.
The most glorious example of this is comparing C23's #embed with Rust's include_bytes! macro. These are both ways to include a file full of data into your program - which if you're a C programmer you will know was really annoying to do cross-platform before #embed
In C23 the data is just some literals like 1, 86, 69, 204 that are promised to be one unsigned byte each and you do with them whatever you want. How long do they live? -shrug- in some sense forever, but, then again maybe not, it depends.
But in Rust it's specifically &'static [u8; N] -- a reference to an array of N bytes which has the 'static lifetime, it lives potentially for the life of your program.