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submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by seth@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

Python is memory safe? Can't you access/address memory with C bindings?

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[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 110 points 8 months ago

Python is memory safe? Can't you access/address memory with C bindings?

You can do that in basically any language. Rust even has the ability to break out of its safeguards and write unsafe Rust code.

"Memory safety" in this context is more about the defaults and how easy it is to write unsafe code accidentally.

[-] Traister101@lemmy.today 31 points 8 months ago

Unsafe Rust really just let's you play with pointers

This is the entirety of what Unsafe Rust allows

  • Dereference a raw pointer
  • Call an unsafe function or method
  • Access or modify a mutable static variable
  • Implement an unsafe trait
  • Access fields of unions
[-] declination@programming.dev 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I'm still onboard with rust as being better than C, however...

My understanding is that it is considerably harder to correctly write unsafe rust than it is to correctly write c, because if you accidentally violate any of safe rust's guaranteed invariants in an unsafe block, things go bananas.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 22 points 8 months ago

That's true in C as well, though. This is what people mean when they say things like "undefined behavior can result in time travel".

The difference is twofold:

  • Rust's rules for valid unsafe code are not completely formalized yet. This means that there are open questions about whether particularly complex patterns in unsafe code will be guaranteed by future versions of the compiler to be sound. Conversely, the C and C++ spec are generally sufficient to determine whether any particular piece of code has undefined behavior, even if actually analyzing it to find out is not possible automatically using existing static analysis tools.
  • Because safe Rust is so strict about what it permits, the compiler is able to make more aggressive optimizations; in theory, this could indeed cause undefined behavior to be "worse" at runtime than a comparable situation in a globally-unsafe language. I'm unaware of any actual examples of that phenomenon, though.
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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
145 points (92.9% liked)

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