What is the rationale behind allowing variable shadowing in Rust? [closed]

Because it was initially supported and never removed:

It’s more like we never forbade shadowing, since it just fell out of the implementation of the compiler.

As I recall, Graydon floated the idea of forbidding shadowing, but I stuck up for the feature, nobody else really cared, and so it stayed.

– pcwalton

See also:

• RFC 459: Disallow type/lifetime parameter shadowing
• What does ‘let x = x’ do in Rust?
• Why do I need rebinding/shadowing when I can have mutable variable binding?
• In Rust, what’s the difference between “shadowing” and “mutability”?